FAITH FOR 
COLLEGE MAN 



■ 






MARTYN SUMMERBELL 




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Book 







Gojpglrt N° 



COFYKIGHT DEPOSIT. 



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FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 



Faith for 
the College Man 



College Sermons 



BY 



MARTYN SUMMERBELL, D. D., LL. D 

President of Palmer Institute -Starkey Seminary 
Vice President of Defiance College 



Author of "Special Services for Christian Ministers," 
"Religion in College Life," Etc. 



Press of 

The Christian Publishing Association 

DAYTON, OHIO 

1915 



Copyright, 1915,^ 
MARTYN SUMMERBELL 






OCT -41915 



CU411808 
1M| 



PREFACE 

THE hearty reception by the religious press 
and by ministers of several denominations 
given to the former volume of college ser- 
mons has encouraged the issue of this modest 
book. In these discourses to college students there 
has been no effort at mystification, but rather the 
desire to state plain gospel truths in a manner to 
interest and strengthen the faith of the hearers 
in the simple religion of Jesus. 

If any of these have been assisted to the deeper 
trust in their Savior, and a more active service 
for the kingdom the object of the preacher has 
been attained. 

Martyn Summerbell. 

Lakemont, N. Y., July 1, 1915. 



CONTENTS 

I. The Faith in Revelation - 11 

II. The Faith Revealed in Christ 29 

III. Faith Confirmed in Youth - 45 

IV. Faith the Guardian of Youth - 61 
V. Faith Divinely Simple - 81 

VI. Faith That Builds Character 105 

VII. Faith and Science in Concord 125 

VIII. The Faith in Sincerity - 143 

IX. Faith Outshining - - 161 

X. Faith's Impulse to Mercy - 181 

XI. Faith Ever Developing - 201 

XII. Faith's Heavenly Treasure - 221 



THE FAITH IN REVELATION 



I. 

THE FAITH IN REVELATION 

Exodus 3: 5 — "Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes 
from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is 
holy ground." 

HERE is a picture which appeals strongly to 
any imaginative soul, but particularly so 
to the student who is eager to understand 
the course of history, and to pursue investigation 
of the influences which move the souls of men. 
Moses, the servant of God, bends before the burn- 
ing bush. The wildness of the mountain renders 
the scene as weird as the gathering of the 
witches in Macbeth; but while that is uncanny 
and blood-curdling, at this sight the soul experi- 
ences a solemn awe, which all the remoteness of 
thirty-three generations cannot efface. The grand 
old crags are lonesome in their silence of isolation. 
It is with mountains as with men. Some are 
friendly and sociable. They invite acquaintance 
and draw you toward them with a subtle charm. 
But others repel. They retreat behind a barrier 
of self-sufficiency, as if to warn all intruders to 
keep their distance. So it is with Sinai. Its jut- 
ting peaks of flinty granite or glowing porphyry 
tower like sentinels over grim chasms that gape 
with menace of destruction. Here is none of that 
friendly retirement, fitted for pleasant and restful 



Defiance College, Ohio, October 5, 1913. 



12 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

meditation, which comes from the outlook through 
spreading forest and over gentle lakelets, such 
as stir the tourist with sweet surprise in Upper 
Westmoreland, or in our own Adirondacks or 
Catskills; for the mountain side is bare. Here 
and there the scanty vegetation struggles for 
existence, and is limited to bunches of grasses, 
herbs, and stunted shrubs. From their grandeur 
and desolation travelers have called these eleva- 
tions of the Sinaitic desert, "The Alps Unclothed." 
One of our great historians of the past — Ebers — 
has said that if it were his duty to illustrate 
Dante's poem, The Inferno, he would have pitched 
his camp stool here, "for there could never be 
wanting to the limner of the dark abyss of the 
pit, landscapes savage, terribly, immeasurably 
sad, unutterably wild, unapproachably grand and 
awful." It is the abode of silence, the trysting 
place where one may wrestle with troublous ques- 
tions or ponder the solution of perplexities, and, 
thinking great thoughts attain to grand resolves. 
And the man. One solitary watcher penetrates 
these fastnesses, which are seldom trodden by 
human foot. Leading his flock to pasturage Moses 
has been forced from the aridness of the plain 
to push up into the hills where he searches out the 
remnants of herbage along the torrent beds, where 
the moisture lingers longest. Though solitary, 
Moses fits the scene. Majestic in stature and full 
of dignity — you cannot think of him otherwise — 
towering like the crags about him, he moves in 
solemn thought. What great questions weigh him 
down ; questions of duty, questions of honor, ques- 
tions of God's providential care. He recalls his 



THE FAITH IN REVELATION 13 

race back in Egypt, where they are suffering in 
bitter bondage. He had come to their aid with all 
the warmth of a generous nature, but they had 
thrust him away. From his intervention in their 
behalf Israel had gained no respite of burdens, 
and he had forfeited long cherished friendships, 
established fortune, a prospective throne, and as 
a result of it all here he is in ignominious exile. 
As one man, unsupported, what can he offer for 
the relief of his people whom still he loves ? 

And then the wonder! In upon his abstracted 
senses steals an unwonted sight. In the trackless 
desert, a flame ! In the uninhabited wolderness, a 
blazing bush! And, greater wonder still; for 
though it burns, it is not burning. Lambent 
tongues of increasing fire curl about twig and 
bough, and yet when he looks for the twig to 
shrivel in the consuming heat, or for the bough to 
fall, they still are there. Astonishment piques 
curiosity. For the bush is the s'neh of the desert, 
the dry and tindery acacia, which naturally flashes 
when kindled into an instant flame, and then, 
tinder-like, is as instantly gone. But the blaze 
harms this bush no more than if it were the brick 
arch of a temple. The phenomenon is so marked 
as to summon him from his meditations and rouse 
him to search out the causes. "I will now turn 
aside," says he, "and see this great sight, why 
the bush is not burnt" But as he approaches, 
behold, a greater wonder ! Out of the midst of the 
flame, a voice! So far, and no further! "Draw 
not nigh hither," such the voice, "Put off thy shoes 
from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou 
Blandest is holy ground" 



14 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

At this the soul of the stalwart Moses trembles. 
He has no fear in all the awf ulness of nature, but 
he does shrink in the presence of the living God. 
You read in the Scripture, "And Moses hid his 
face, for he was afraid to look upon God." 

Out of the midst of the flame of this burning 
bush we may to-day read a blessed truth, no less 
than that of the Divine presence, of God from the 
heavens reaching down to His servant man. 

There are seasons in life, alternations of dark- 
ness with the light, when calamity follows calam- 
ity, as wave in the ocean chases wave, until from 
sheer exhaustion the weary struggler loses breath 
and courage. 

There are private griefs and disturbances which 
plague us by day and make the night a sorrow. 
There are bitter enmities and perplexing disap- 
pointments. The tongue of malice wounds us. 
Great losses befall. Every path that we follow 
seems hedged up against progress, and we cannot 
break down the barriers. 

Or, we are bending under the burden of public 
care. What evils we face, and how gigantic! 
Iniquity is intrenched in power. Given any vice, 
and the worse it is, the mightier the resources at 
its command. Sit in your parlor and map out 
the campaign for cleansing out the moral plague 
spots of a great city. How simple the task ! Good 
people, respectable, who hate iniquity: plenty of 
them! Officers of the law, civil officers of the 
town, judges, police; all constituted for this very 
thing ! The machinery is all ready at one's hand. 
God is in heaven, God, who looks on sin with not 
the least degree of allowance ; in whose nostrils all 



THE FAITH IN REVELATION 15 

sin is a continual offense. Surely, there needs but 
the touch, the word, and all these powers will 
strike hands for the immediate overthrow of any 
form of evil-doing. So it may appear to the inex- 
perienced, but when you step down from your easy 
chair to inaugurate your campaign you find the 
task far from being so simple. You approach the 
friends of virtue and solicit their cooperation, but 
find them free with counsel, and slow in actual aid, 
financial or other. And what counsel they are 
willing to impart is mostly on the side of discour- 
agement. Each has his own concerns, his pleas- 
ures, his business, his household, and these absorb 
all his energies ; and beside that your campaign if 
carried through is certain to offend some one in 
whom he has an interest. So he pats you on the 
back, but does not enlist in your company. 

From him you turn to the officers of the law, to 
the men who are paid by the city or by the state 
to attend to this very thing; but they also are 
prodigal with excuses. Law! I venerate the 
word. The protection which the state supplies 
to the persons and property of its citizens is won- 
derful. But again, how much is left undone! 
Individual offenders are now and then swept up in 
the legal net ; but for all that there remains in all 
our cities a great criminal class, which is a 
reproach to our civilization. Public officials fre- 
quently enforce the laws which it seems popular 
to enforce, but the others which they are not 
pressed to enforce they neglect. Constantly they 
are closing their eyes to the existence of great 
evils, which they are inclined to call "necessary 
evils." Under such rebuffs patience almost gives 



16 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

way. But still there is God. You can pray. You 
turn to your closet and there you pour out your 
soul for the tide of wickedness to be stayed, and 
for the right to triumph. What results ? Human- 
ity still groans, being burdened. Your prayer is 
not answered and the heavens are as brass. 

Some such experience befalls every soul that is 
charged with a sense of high mission. First there 
comes the flush of enthusiasm; then the settling 
down to zealous labor, and then lower the shadows 
of doubt, loneliness, and disappointment. 

What travail for Elijah all those years when he 
regarded himself as the only believer in a nation 
of idolaters ! What a desolate time for Paul, and 
Luther, and Wesley, and Edwards, and Judson, 
before they could enlist helpers to see truth with 
their eyes! What agony in the soul of Jesus, as 
He knelt in the garden, and when later, in the 
shadow of the cross he exclaimed, "My God, why 
hast thou forsaken me V 3 

And yet, for all our doubtings, God is nearer 
than we think. Israel might groan and implore, 
and in the bitterness of increasing bondage, might 
imagine that God had forgotten. 

And Moses, in the desperation of his personal 
fortunes, might suppose the same. What change 
for him from the courtly circles of the palace to 
herding sheep in the wilderness. And how tedious 
the waiting ! I can think how he prayed the first 
year, and the second year, and the fifth year, and 
the tenth year. But how about the twentieth and 
the thirtieth year? And this is now the fortieth 
year, and life is slipping away, and this man of 
commanding talents, of untiring zeal, of multi- 



THE FAITH IN REVELATION 17 

form learning, is buried in this solitude! Forty 
years of climbing these rugged peaks! Forty 
years of following the lambs down into the 
abysses. Forty years of protecting the flocks 
from ravening beasts ! Is this the life of faith and 
self-sacrifice ? Has God forgotten ? 

And yet for all the loneliness God was there 
in the desolate wilderness. When most He seemed 
far away He was close at hand. And it is so 
to-day. Sometimes it is needful to wait. Our 
measures are crude, our plans faulty, our purposes 
misguided. Time must ripen away the crudeness 
and bring unity of action. But all the while God 
is hearing and is bringing relief. The Christian 
believes devoutly in God. I am walking down 
these aisles of time with a growing sense of the 
Divine immanence. Though a lonely wanderer, I 
lift my hand and I touch infinitude. In my prayer 
closet, God is there. At my desk, God is there. 
As I enter the pulpit, God is there. And so to me 
and to you, every incident, even the most trivial ; 
every circumstance, however discouraging in 
appearance, may become the medium of cheer and 
blessing. Many a withered bush, esteemed by 
men as mean and worthless, may glow with God's 
presence and God's promise, and bring to the soul 
the comfort of a lively hope. 

From the burning bush flashes also this kindred 
truth, not only that God reaches men, but that He 
reaches mind. Beside upholding the world by His 
arm of power, He makes Himself known to His 
people. He declares His presence. He communi- 
cates His will. 



18 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

Am I told that there is an opposite view. Are 
there some who sneer at the beautiful stories of 
the Old Testament revelation, and are there others 
who explain them away as being natural events 
touched up by the vivid imagination of the oriental 
mind ; and are there others still who hope against 
hope, and through many fears desire that some- 
where in it all they may discover some remnant of 
truth? These tales of the Exodus, of the Plagues 
of Egypt, of the Crossing of the Sea, of the Manna 
from Heaven, of the Waters Gushing from the 
Flinty Rock ; our fathers believed them all and had 
great comfort in their confidence in God. 

But what are these doubts that so many cherish, 
open or concealed; and whither do they lead? 
Likely enough one can so interpret the sacred 
Scripture as to introduce a seeming consistency 
in the narrative by explaining away the miracu- 
lous. Say that the incident was colored by a vivid 
imagination. Suggest natural causes for all 
unusual events. Insist that the sun gleamed on a 
bush and that Moses was so innocent that he mis- 
took it for a gleam of fire! Make it plain that 
Aaron's rod was so crooked that Pharoah thought 
it must be a serpent and was afraid ! Point out 
that a strong wind must have blown the Red Sea 
dry at a time of low tide ! Wherever the Scripture 
tells of a miracle declare that it is merely a figure 
of speech ! Where the Bible mentions that an angel 
spoke to Abraham or to Lot assure us that it is a 
rhetorical flourish ! In such manner the miracles 
can be emptied of the miraculous, and the Scrip- 
tures can be emptied of God. But how shall we 
characterize such treatment? Admit we must 



THE FAITH IN REVELATION 19 

that the miracles offer difficulties; but for that 
matter what department of human life, or what 
branch of learning is free from some sort of diffi- 
culty? Send your child to the high school, and 
shall he revise all the grammars to suit his undis- 
ciplined condition, dropping out the long rules of 
the Latin grammar, and dismissing the bother- 
some sinuosities of the Greek verb ? Not so at all. 
He has to take the Latin and the Greek as he finds 
them. And in our view of the case miracles are 
merely the irregular nouns in the grammar of 
omnipotence; although I imagine before we are 
through with them we shall find them far more 
numerous than we have suspected, and quite the 
regular nouns of God's administration. Eliminate 
the difficult, the wonderful things, from history! 
It is possible, but whenever it is attempted we 
shall find, as stated in the words of another, that 
"if we do not understand God's ways with man, 
we shall at least clearly see what are man's ways 
with God, and with His revelation/' 

But I was asking whither all this explaining 
away is to lead. It all focusses to a single point, 
the denial that God reaches His people ; the denial 
that the Divine Mind reaches the human mind; 
the denial that the Divine Spirit communicates 
in any way, or by any channel, with the human 
spirit. 

Now I am not anxious to make a new definition 
of a miracle, though I confess that I am disin- 
clined to be bound up too tight by the definitions 
given by others. But this I am willing to stand by 
and declare that if the Divine Mind is to reach the 
human mind at all, it must be through what we 



20 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

are accustomed to style as miracle. If God sends 
bread from heaven to feed the needy thousands of 
Israel in the desert, that is a miracle. If Abraham 
has a vision in the night, which bids him to get 
out of the land of his fathers, that is a miracle. If 
God sends His Son into the world to teach it and 
to redeem it, that too is miracle. For the miracle 
is the bridge which permits the Divine to pass 
over and come into contact with the human mind. 
It is the medium for communicating the Divine 
power or the Divine purpose. How shall God 
reach man? Shall He write a letter, and seal it 
with the great seal of heaven, and fold it into an 
envelop and drop it into the United States mail? 
You do not discover a miracle recorded between 
the two lids of the Bible that is greater than such 
a miracle would be. Shall God touch the soul of 
man, firing it with new purpose in the line of His 
great plans and writing on it nobler views of duty 
and consecration? But that would be miracle 
also. 

Here is the whole question in a nutshell. God 
can communicate with His people, or He cannot. 
Who shall aver that He cannot? Have you ever 
struggled in dreams with a feeling of utter help- 
lessness, anxious to accomplish somewhat, but 
always restrained ? You dream of the carriage in 
which you would ride, but it rolls away just as you 
get your foot on the step. You dream of the 
friend whom you would greet, but just as you are 
about to speak to him he vanishes from sight. 
What torture is such an experience! How glad 
you are when you waken and realize that it was 
nothing but a dream ! After that who will be so 



THE FAITH IN REVELATION 21 

venturesome as to declare that a state like that is 
the normal thing with the great God of the uni- 
verse; that He may wish to help His people, but 
cannot; that He has so bound Himself up in the 
laws of His own making that He cannot lift a 
finger for their relief, or that He cannot speak a 
word to them that they can hear? Away with 
such a thought ! If ever there was a place where 
it would be right to be skeptical it is just here. We 
will not believe of the Almighty that He has ever 
excavated an abyss so profound that His grace 
cannot cross it, or that He has erected any barrier 
of natural law to such towering height that Infi- 
nite Love cannot overleap it and bring some swift 
message for our knowledge and redemption. But 
when you say that, you have settled the whole case 
of the miracle. A Divine religion in its estab- 
lishment and maintenance has a place for the 
miraculous. This the Christian believes and is 
steadfast in the confession of his belief. God deter- 
mines to send His servant Moses to Egypt. He 
speaks to this messenger from the burning bush. 
He gives into his hand signs and wonders so that 
Pharaoh may know, so that all Israel may know, so 
that the whole world shall know that God has 
given him his high commission, and made him His 
accredited ambassador from the Court of Heaven. 

From the burning bush comes also a voice of 
reverence. God impresses His servant's heart. 
"Put off thy shoes from off thy feet," so says the 
angel, "for the place whereon thou standest is holy 
ground." 

No temple there with towering spire or lustrous 
dome. No modest shrine. Nothing more than a 



22 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

desert bush aflame with the presence of God. But 
God consecrates the place. Holy ground! Off 
then with the sandals! Hide the face! Bow in 
reverential adoration ! This devotion you observe 
reaches the outward act. "Put off thy shoes!" 
In the east for the expression of respect they 
uncover the feet, as we in the west for the same 
purpose uncover the head. The priests in the 
tabernacle and in the temple served at the altar, or 
bore the ark of the covenant with feet unshod. 
Moses in the desert, as he draws near to God must 
come with the outward tokens and posture of 
devotion. 

Is there question why this should be so? Why 
bow the head? Why bend the knee? Why loose 
the sandal ? What need of the outward sign when 
the heart prostrates itself before God? Moses 
might worship in his heart. Is not that enough? 
No others are here. He is alone with God. Why 
ask more than that he feel reverential ? And yet 
here is the plain command, "Put off thy shoes 
from off thy feet, for the "place whereon thou 
standest is holy ground" 

And this was the right thing to do, for after 
all that might be said there is much that is due to 
place and circumstance. Conduct which might be 
appropriate for the street, or for the concert room, 
or for the parlor of a friend, is not appropriate for 
the house of God. I enter the sanctuary on the 
Sabbath day. It is holy ground. Sacred associa- 
tions are knit into every part of it ; into the pulpit, 
where the gospel has been preached; into the 
choir, whence have ascended such triumphal songs 
of glory ; into the pews, where the veterans of the 



THE FAITH IN REVELATION 23 

cross have taken their places and worshiped. 
What comfort has been experienced here by strug- 
gling souls, what consolation to mourners, what 
pardon to sinners, what special manifestations of 
reviving grace to penitent souls when they were 
seeking after God! What consorts with a place 
like that? Certainly nothing that is gloomy. 
That was one trouble with the religion of Egypt. 
No doubt, according to what we learn from the 
monuments, there were priests of Egypt who wor- 
shiped the one true God, but they did not impart 
that knowledge to the people whom they suffered 
to be idolaters, and whom they taught to worship 
after a ritual which was sombre and funereal in 
all its accessories and effects. Christians banish 
such thoughts from the house of prayer. Make 
religion gloomy, and you freeze devotion to death, 
with high sounding respectability for its winding 
sheet. Rather than that, make religion a delight ! 
Let the vaulted arches ring with triumphal 
anthems. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord. Let 
the air be so laden with inspiration and aspiration, 
that every soul that comes under the holy influence 
shall say, "/ was glad when they said unto me, let 
us go into the house of the Lord." 

But all this gladness should be on the lofty plane 
of worship. It should be happy, but not frivolous. 
It should be uplifting, not relaxing. The altar is 
not a stage, and is not even a platform. True wor- 
ship to God is not a spectacle, is not a gaudy show. 
No place then in the house of God for noise and 
confusion. No place for idle titterings and gig- 
glings. No place for merriment and folly. Holy 
ground ! 



24 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

"Lo, God is here, let us adore, 

And humbly bow before His face. 
Let all within us feel His power, 
Let all within us seek His grace." 
But beyond the place something is due the soul 
itself. Reverence is an emotion. It is then sub- 
ject to culture. Our feelings are sometimes sup- 
posed to be spontaneous. We fear, we admire, we 
love spontaneously. But there is a difference in 
feelings. Some emotions, if I may so speak, are 
naturally spontaneous and others become spon- 
taneous from culture. We acquire tastes and 
train emotions. The artistic sense can develop 
under culture till the varied tints of the forest 
and the shifting hues of the evening sky, to which 
we once gave the casual glance, become occasions 
of the most exquisite pleasure. It is similar with 
the worshipful spirit. This may be crushed in its 
beginnings, or it may be cherished till it becomes 
a second nature, and a wellspring of serene and 
constant joy. 

Right here it is that the college man of the day 
is open to a temptation which may work upon his 
spirit an infinite mischief. He lives in an atmos- 
phere which has slight regard for what has been 
established, and he is ever on the lookout for novel- 
ties in thought and expression. In certain college 
sets there is a strong current which runs counter 
to reverence, to adoration, to worship, and which 
inclines to turn all these into occasions for idle 
jestings and ridicule. The unreverential person 
may distribute his engagements in such a manner 
as to avoid the gatherings for social worship, and 
to escape the hallowed moments spent by the 



THE FAITH IN REVELATION 25 

Christian at the table of His Lord. Culture of the 
soul in religion may be neglected. All those scenes 
and occasions which incline the soul to bow before 
God may be voted a tedious bore. Were the bush 
in the desert to blaze again with the presence of 
Divinity, would it be strange if the soul that had 
trained itself to religious indifference should turn 
its back upon the privilege of communion with its 
Maker? 

But for our student there is the more excel- 
lent way. Enjoyment of devotion comes with 
exercise, and the reverential spirit increases with 
observance of the outward forms of reverence. 
Prince Bismarck doubtless owed much of his suc- 
cess in life to the sagacious counsel of his father, 
who once rebuked him sharply for his irreverence 
to the throne. While but a boy he had indulged 
his levity by speaking of the emperor as "Fritz." 
"Learn to speak reverently of His Majesty/' said 
he, "and you will grow accustomed to think of him 
with reverence" The lesson took effect. Bis- 
marck learned to think and to speak reverently of 
the throne, and the loyalty of his heart gave him 
the impulse which brought to pass the unity of the 
Fatherland. 

If to speak reverently of earthly dignities is 
profitable, how much more so will it be with God. 
Said the Psalmist, "O come, let us worship and 
bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our 
maker" The worshipful attitude induces the 
worshipful spirit. In one of our southern States 
a young lady begged of a traveling preacher a book 
which he carried in his saddle bag, and which had 
struck her fancy. "J will give it to you willingly," 



26 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

said he, "provided you promise me to pray God 
every night to make you a Christian." She was 
solemnized by the condition, but she made the 
pledge. When he came back after the four weeks 
had passed the whole current of her life was 
changed. She had kept her promise. She had 
bowed in prayer, and God had touched her heart 
with sovereign grace. Four weeks she had prayed 
because she had given her word. Now she prayed 
because she had pledged her heart. 

The bush burning on the mountainside called 
Moses from leading the flock to leading a mighty 
nation. But more than that it stands for us as a 
perpetual memorial of God reaching down to man, 
of God reaching the mind of man and of God 
touching the heart of man. 

He who spoke to Moses in a flame of fire out of 
the midst of a bush speaks to us also. Possibly 
the manifestations may be different, different to 
us, and different to every one of us. But let the 
light come as it may, by outward sign, by the 
teaching of His Holy Word, or by the revelation of 
His grace in His Son our Lord, or by the inward 
torch of truth, the conviction of duty in the silent 
recesses of the heart, be it ours to accept the light, 
to do the work and to expect the full manifestation 
of His glory. 

We too may hear the voice of the angel, "Put off 
thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon 
thou standest is holy ground" 



THE FAITH REVEALED IN CHRIST 



II. 

THE FAITH REVEALED IN CHRIST 

Hebrews 1: 1, 2 — "God who at sundry times and in 
divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by 
the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by 
his son." 

THE writer of this epistle opens his masterly 
argument by the statement of two funda- 
mental propositions. 
The first of these is in the first verse of the 
chapter, where he declares that God hath spoken 
to His people. This thought was welcome to the 
Jewish mind. The Jew was trained from child- 
hood to believe in God, in a God who could hear 
prayer and answer it ; in a God who could sympa- 
thize with his sorrows and lift a mighty arm for 
his deliverance. 

Some things cannot be argued away. You exist. 
No trickster in words can convince you that you 
are not alive or that you are somebody else than 
yourself. You may not say with Descartes, "I 
think, therefore I am," but you are positively 
assured of the fact that you are alive, you, your- 
self. That matter is past the shadow of a doubt. 

So you know your own experiences. You take a 
little trip to Boston and enjoy yourself hugely. 
When you get back home, some one in your hear- 
ing ventures the suggestion that Boston is a very 



Defiance College, Ohio, October 5, 1913. 



30 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

regular town, since it is all laid out at right angles. 
But after your personal experience with Boston 
you speak right up and remark that your friend 
must have been thinking of Philadelphia, for you 
had found Boston so far from regular that you 
had lost yourself inside of half an hour. You are 
almost ready to accept the old explanation that 
the Boston streets were laid out on the old cow 
paths, since they wander so much here and there. 
In an instance like that you feel that your own 
experience is conclusive, that seeing is believing. 

Nations similarly acquire a national experi- 
ence, which is as firm and vivid, and possibly even 
more so than the individual experience. With the 
years there grows up a national consciousness. 
Historical facts enter into and become a part of 
a nation's life. George Washington was born in 
Virginia ; he became the General, the Commander- 
in-Chief of the Continental Armies, and when 
the nation was ready to stand on its feet, he was 
elected the first President of the United States. 
Now if some doubter were to come along and 
endeavor to persuade you that you do not really 
know anything about George Washington, because 
you never saw him, and that possibly the whole 
story is a myth, a sort of glorified tradition, a 
development of the national pride, and a personifi- 
cation of the American spirit which creates for 
itself an imaginary hero, what will you say to 
that? Will his hypothesis shake your historical 
conviction as to the reality of George Washington ? 
Not in the least degree. You will tell him that his 
brilliant hypothesis is all stuff and nonsense. If 
you did not see Washington for yourself, the 



FAITH REVEALED IN CHRIST 31 

nation saw him. The nation honored him. The 
nation triumphed in his triumph. 

And a like national experience came to every 
child of Israel. They all knew Abraham, and 
Moses, and Elijah, just as you know Christopher 
Columbus, George Washington, and Abraham 
Lincoln. The Jew recognized the heroes of his 
race, not only as great men, but also as prophets 
of God. The Almighty had intrusted to them a 
message for His children. They spoke God's 
words. The Decalogue was God's law. The Tab- 
ernacle service was patterned according to the 
divine arrangement. The fiery eloquence of the 
prophets, of Isaiah, and Ezekiel, and Jeremiah, 
was kindled at God's holy altar. The writer of 
this epistle was striking a very sympathetic and 
responsive chord when he declared that God spake 
in time past unto the fathers by the prophets. 

In this speech of "fathers" and "prophets," the 
reference is doubtless to God's revelations to 
Israel. Yet there were other revelations which 
were no less divine. The Scripture teaches that 
God counseled with Job. Who was Job? Cer- 
tainly he was never a Jew. With equal assurance 
we can affirm that he was a prince of Idumea, 
Edom, and possibly a direct progenitor of Herod 
the Great. As told in the Genesis story we observe 
that God's presence and blessing were conspic- 
uously lavished upon Melchisedek. But who 
was Melchisedek? Certainly he too was never a 
Jew. He was king of Salem, a Gentile, and yet 
Melchisedek was so much greater than Abraham 
that this friend of God bows down before him and 
pays him tithes and reverence. In a later day 



32 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

God speaks of Cyrus as His "anointed" and His 
"messiah." But who was Cyrus? Obviously he 
was not a Jew, but a Persian Gentile, a pagan. 
And yet it was this same Persian king whom God 
commissioned to save the Jewish name and to com- 
mand the rebuilding of the Temple on Zion. 

Now what the Bible declares of God's leading 
for such eminent souls, though they were alto- 
gether outside of the Jewish race, I may confi- 
dently apply to the good and great of every clime 
and of every age. With me it is a favorite reflec- 
tion that God is stirring in every great movement 
that tends toward progress, to national uplifting. 
The Creator is speaking to and through His 
creatures. Differences there will be, and there 
must be. Play the same melody on various instru- 
ments, and because the flute is not the cornet, and 
the harp is not the organ, you will hear a differing 
quality of sound, but each instrument will carry 
the same melody, while the most perfect among 
them will give melody, and harmony, with the 
added power of the over and under tones. It is 
much the same, so I take it, with inspiration. 
Among the writers of Scripture you remark dif- 
ferences of style and language which you will 
refer to what we call the personal element. Moses 
is a master-mind who proves on every page the 
thoroughness of his scholarly training, while 
Amos breathes the simplicity of the plow. Paul 
is the accomplished rhetorician; Peter is the 
impetuous man, who has been trained less in the 
school than the fishing boat. In the light of such 
examples we may perceive how God is speaking to 
mankind at large. The Infinite Mind is behind all 



FAITH REVEALED IN CHRIST 33 

great achievements of human thought. Whence 
come these tidal waves of reformation, which turn 
the world upside down to its great advantage? 
Their source is in the power and will of Almighty 
God. The surpassing works, which men will not 
willingly let die, are God-begotten; are scintilla- 
tions of genius ; are sparks from the celestial altar. 
The painters, the sculptors, the authors, the 
philosophers, who by common consent outrank 
their kind have not studied the secret of their art. 
A lad once came to Mozart, the great composer, 
and said that he wished to study musical composi- 
tion. "But wait," said the great master. "But 
you composed when you were younger than I," 
was the piteous appeal. "Yes," replied Mozart, 
"but I did not have to ask anybody about it." 
Such geniuses, who do not need to ask, accomplish 
great things with less exertion than lesser men 
employ to accomplish little things. And what 
they do so grandly comes with the right mood. 
There is no driving them to their task with whip 
and spur. When the right moment comes, when 
the soul is all aflame, in its raptest flight they 
perform the work of centuries. I am calling such 
creative moments inspired. I am finding inspired 
men in every walk of life. To me Homer and 
Vergil; Praxiteles and Phidias; Socrates and 
Kepler had their measure of inspiration. And so 
Columbus and Luther; Stephenson and Edison; 
Wesley and Moody have had their measure of 
inspiration. They have been drawn toward poesy 
and painting and sculpture ; toward discovery, and 
philosophy, and religion, very much as God's 
prophets of the olden time were drawn toward the 



34 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

divine truth. Each man, according to his own 
capacities, and under the limitations of his pecu- 
liar field, was accomplishing more or less the 
purpose of God. God has never forsaken His peo- 
ple and He never will forsake them. Age after 
age He has been urging forward the material and 
spiritual culture of the race, and He will continue 
to do the same so long as the world endures. 

But this thought of the apostle, that God has 
spoken in the past, is merely the preface to a far 
profounder argument. The sonorous adverbs of 
the Greek, which we clumsily render as "in sundry 
times" and "in divers manners," are indicative of 
the fragmentary nature of the primitive revela- 
tions. God has been speaking in genius, in poetry, 
in art, in the explanation of the nature of things. 
He has spoken by law-givers, by judges, by proph- 
ets. He has appeared to some by dreams, to others 
by visions, to others still by the inward voice of 
truth. The revelations of the past have been 
marked by differences. The Abrahamic worship 
was not the same as the Levitical. The priesthood 
of Aaron was a very different thing from the 
priesthood of Melchisedek. The moral law and 
the ceremonial law are quite unlike in form, and 
they appeal to the soul in a different manner. In 
important details the precepts of the patriarchs 
are modified by the precepts of the prophets. 
Truth coming in portions and through so many 
different channels confuses at length by the very 
multiplicity of the revelations. In such case what 
are we naturally to expect? What is the practice 
of the courts under similar embarrassment? In 
the lapse of years the judges have made thousands 



FAITH REVEALED IN CHRIST 35 

on thousands of decisions, by which they have 
elucidated the law. Decision is piled upon deci- 
sion, and case upon case. When the accumulation 
becomes so great that we are perplexed by the 
excess of legal treasure, the legislature takes a 
hand in the business and revises the statutes. 
Useless accumulations and special enactments are 
swept away, and what is fundamental and essen- 
tial is presented in clearer light and more practical 
form. It is such thought of God's revelation 
which underlies the use of these adverbs by the 
apostle. God's speech in the past, so he would 
say, has been fragmentary, coming at sundry 
times and divers manners. To make His truth 
shine out more truly there had to be a fresh reve- 
lation. For this reason God speaks again, this 
time in His Son, who is the brightness of His 
glory and the express image of His person. This 
revision of the divine law was expressed in a per- 
son. The Divine Wisdom, the heavenly Word, 
becomes flesh, and dwells among us, and we behold 
His glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father, 
full of grace and truth. 

Who is this messenger of the Father, the 
Infinite Son of the Infinite God? Who, I ask, in 
all the range of history is the truest interpreter 
of the will of Heaven? Who has sounded the 
prof oundest depths of the human soul ? Who has 
proposed and exemplified the purest and loftiest 
type of character? Who has opened most clearly 
and conclusively the mysteries that shadow us in 
this life, and that overhang the way that leads to 
the life to come? To all this there is a single 
answer. It is Jesus of Nazareth, who has dis- 



36 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

cussed the weightiest themes that angels bend to 
study, and who has explained them in terms so 
clear that a child can comprehend. In Him the 
Jewish race has its culmination and the Temple 
service and the ceremonial law their solution. He 
has spoken, and we see displayed before us the 
mysteries of the kingdom, the destiny of souls and 
the perfect character of God. He has discussed 
the bounds of right and wrong, and has digged 
such a gulf between them that no man can bridge 
it without doing violence to his own conscience. 
Studying the glory and dignity of the revelation 
of Jesus Christ, I am constrained to believe that 
if we were to summon a world convention of ten 
delegates from every religion now extant, and 
should propose to that vast parliament to declare 
by vote who is the chief of all teachers, the philos- 
opher of philosophers, the purest and noblest 
mind ever revealed to this poor world of ours, that 
there would be but one decision. The vote might 
be taken by a double ballot, every delegate writing 
first his own choice, and then a second name. 
Probably every delegate would write the name of 
his own leader for his first choice, the Turk writ- 
ing the name of Mohammed ; the Buddhist, Gau- 
tama; the Parsee, Zoroaster. But when the bal- 
lots were taken up, whosoever this man or that 
might have named for his primary choice, the one 
name returned overwhelmingly from that ballot 
would be that of Him, whom we worship as Son of 
God and the Savior of the world. 

This Christ who bears God's message presents 
the importance of the future life. Here conduct 
and philosophy together have been all astray. 



FAITH REVEALED IN CHRIST 37 

The common practice has been to care for the 
world that we now live in and to let the next world 
care for itself. Men are living for the moment, 
content if they have their luxuries, and hoping 
only for a long lease of power and a magnificent 
funeral. All this Christ shows to be folly. He 
preaches that the things which are seen are tem- 
poral, and that the things we should care for are 
eternal. He would have men lay up their treas- 
ures in Heaven rather than on the earth. What 
a picture is that He paints for us in the parable of 
the man who builds his great barns, and who the 
night they are finished is suddenly called to judg- 
ment! How vivid too that other picture of the 
rich man tormented, and of Lazarus the beggar 
rejoicing in Abraham's bosom! "What shall it 
profit a man," so He asks, "if he gain the whole 
world and lose his own soul?" Is such teaching 
out of date, when we canvass the neglectfulness 
and religious indifference of the age ? How about 
this pagan plan of forgetting the other life while 
we are hastening to grasp every passing pleasure? 
What philosophy this, which provides for the body 
and does nothing for the soul? If there be an- 
other life, what about entering it wholly unpre- 
pared? If there be a God in heaven, how about 
disregard of His holy law, refusal to bow the knee 
in worship, shutting up the heart against acknowl- 
edgment of His name? Ah, my friend, the best 
friend man ever had felt the burden of these obli- 
gations. He wept over the unbelief of Jerusalem, 
which was hurrying the Holy City to its doom. 
He went to the cross to declare the necessity of 
redemption, and to set the value of the human soul. 



38 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

Christ, who brings God's message, announces it 
hopefully. His word is the gospel, the good news 
of salvation. Immortality, eternal life ; these are 
not far from any one of us. In their folly men 
have been misrepresenting the breadth and ful- 
ness of the divine love. 

Some have presented a helpless God. It is 
related that Victor Emanuel, the first king of 
united Italy, once handed his prime minister a 
petition from a subject, and said that he had 
almost pledged his royal word that it would be 
granted. The minister glanced at it an instant 
and returned it with the dry word, "Sire, it is 
impossible." So the king returned it to the peti- 
tioner with this counsel, "Friend, you will have to 
get some one to sign your paper who has more 
influence in this kingdom than I." 

So fatalists have taught that God is bound. 
Whatever happens, so they make out, comes to 
pass because it has been decreed from all eternity, 
so that not even Omnipotence can alter its course. 

And materialists are teaching that God is 
bound. Natural law by their interpretation is 
everything, and even more powerful than God. 
As they point out God does not have authority 
enough in His kingdom to make repairs when the 
machinery gets out of gear. Curious is it not that 
fatalism and materialism strike hands together 
to minimize Omnipotence ! 

Others have presented a partial God, a God who 
delights in His special pets and favorites. This 
was the error of the Jew. "We," said they, "are 
the children of Abraham." 



FAITH REVEALED IN CHRIST 39 

Others have presented us with an ever holy God, 
a God so sublimely holy that He has no place near 
Himself for any but the flawlessly perfect. They 
have no sympathy with any who have suffered 
temptation. Such would crush penitence under 
an eternity of shame. 

But Jesus corrects all these misapprehensions 
and misrepresentations. Our God is a God of 
power, but is also a God of boundless love. He 
rules the world in righteousness, and has no 
respect of persons. He calls to Himself impar- 
tially both Jew and Gentile. He seeks ever to 
save. This is Christ's witness, "God so loved the 
world that he gave his only begotten son, that 
whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but 
have everlasting life." There is not a sinner on 
the earth but can find mercy by forsaking his sin 
and pleading with Christ for pardon. This is the 
promise, "He will save unto the uttermost all them 
that come unto God by him." 

And Christ's message teaches the value of char- 
acter. It bases the joy of the life to come on the 
faithfulness and purity of the life that we live 
here and now. Is this principle sufficiently under- 
stood ? Is there not current too much of an opin- 
ion that somehow death is a leveler, a blotter out 
of all the past, putting all men, bad, good, and 
indifferent on an even plane of prospect and beat- 
itude? The lifelong saint is saved. The lifelong 
sinner, penitent with his latest breath, is saved. 
All that is everlastingly true. But that is not all 
of it, for some are thinking that when these are 
saved they will reach the same plane of spiritual 
experience and in heaven will find an equal joy. 



40 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

That is an opinion which I cannot share. Salva- 
tion is a life. "Follow me," so says the Savior. 
When men stood aloof from duty He rebuked 
them, saying, "Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and 
do not the things which I say?" No doubt the 
Gospel teaches that sinners, vile sinners, may be 
saved when they believe. That murderer on the 
cross was saved when he believed. To commence 
a holy life is to be in the way of salvation. But 
to be in the way of salvation, to be saved, is one 
thing; and to be a complete, well-rounded Chris- 
tian is quite another. The faithful John, who has 
loved Jesus and followed Him all his life through, 
is a man in Christ Jesus. The sinner who is just 
converted is but a babe as yet in character and 
knowledge. Sound reason will not justify the con- 
clusion that a man can live a lifetime without God, 
that he can blaspheme His holy name year after 
year, that he can take to his heart every impious 
lie, and then at his last gasp, by reaching up his 
hand to the Savior, be instantly made the peer of 
martyr and apostle. Whosoever cometh shall be 
saved, sure enough, but the one who comes last is 
not to be set above those who have been faithful 
for years, but in accordance with the principles of 
eternal justice will take his place at the foot of the 
heavenly class. What time a man wastes while 
neglecting spiritual culture here will have to be 
made up hereafter. This is the counsel of the 
Lord, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your 
father which is in heaven is perfect." 

Here I may remark : 

1. God hath spoken by His Son. The Divine 
Messenger proclaims the Divine message. Will 



FAITH REVEALED IN CHRIST 41 

you neglect it, my brother, can you neglect it? If 
you do neglect it, what hope is left you ? Whither 
will you turn for safety? What says the Scrip- 
ture, "For if the word spoken by angels was stead- 
fast, and every transgression and disobedience 
received a just recompense of reward; how shall 
we escape if we neglect so great salvation?" 

2. God speaks in His Son. Here is the truth 
and the highest truth. Of all saving truth, this 
will most certainly save. The very presence of 
Jesus affords present peace, stills the rage of pas- 
sion, lifts the soul above the strife of a noisy 
world and grants the pledge of eternal life. 

3. God speaks in His Son. In times past there 
were angels and prophets, but in these last days 
He has spoken by His Son. There is no nobler 
messenger to send. The gospel of Christ is the 
completest, the last, the final revelation. For 
nineteen centuries it has stood, the target of 
defamation, the prey of persecution, the laughing 
stock of unbelief; but still it stands, and it ever 
will stand, the refuge of faithful discipleship, till 
time shall be no more, and eternity opens its 
blessed perspectives to those who have wisely 
chosen the leadership of the Lord. 



FAITH CONFIRMED IN YOUTH 



III. 

FAITH CONFIRMED IN YOUTH 

Ecclesiastes 12 : 1 — "Remember now thy Creator in the 
days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the 
years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure 
in them." 

WHEN the question is raised respecting the 
right and the wrongs of any course of 
action, two classes of persons are well 
qualified to pass judgment in the case; the good, 
who have responded to the call of duty ; who have 
tasted the fruits of virtue and found them good ; 
and the bad, who have had bitter experience for a 
teacher, and in manifold tribulations have discov- 
ered that the way of the transgressor is hard. 

Among the good the Scripture tells us of Caleb 
and Joshua and their ten comrades, whom Moses 
sent on a scouting expedition in the land of 
Canaan. In a valley a little to the north of 
Hebron they found a region of rare fertility, 
where all manner of fruits of the earth were pro- 
duced in abundance. The grapes particularly 
were of wonderful growth, and when they 
returned they had with them one cluster of such 
amazing size that they slung it on a pole, so that 
two could carry it between them. They had sub- 
stantial proof of their story that the land was 
flowing with milk and honey. 



Defiance College, Ohio, March 1, 1914. 



46 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

Similarly one can test the fertility of the land 
of personal religion. A man who has known in 
his own life the vivifying power of faith is priv- 
ileged to speak with a voice that carries convic- 
tion. 

One of the distinguished men of our nation was 
the late Samuel J. Randall of Pennsylvania, He 
represented his district in Congress for twenty- 
seven years, and was Speaker of the house for 
three terms consecutively. When he was Chair- 
man of the Appropriations Committee he was 
writing one day in his committee room, while 
about him members of his committee and some 
visitors were conversing freely. Their talk ram- 
bled on from topic to topic till it drifted to philoso- 
phy and religion, in regard to which the most of 
them expressed very skeptical views. Apparently 
Mr. Randall had been occupied with his own con- 
cerns, but when a pause occurred he rose to his 
feet and in his masterful way exclaimed, "Gentle- 
men, Christianity is truth. The man who doubts it 
discredits his own intelligence. I have examined 
the matter for myself." Such a statement from 
Mr. Randall left nothing more to be said. And so 
Peter, in his Second Epistle, bases the argument 
for his trust in the Gospel on his personal experi- 
ence. He knew it was not a shrewd fiction, for 
he had been with Jesus on the Mount of Transfig- 
uration. Hear his confident exclamation, "For we 
have not followed cunningly devised fables, when 
we made known unto you the power and coming 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eye wit- 
nesses of his majesty." (2 Pet. 1 : 16.) 



FAITH CONFIRMED IN YOUTH 47 

The second class of persons, those who have 
neglected or opposed the truth, can testify of its 
power, since their course has brought them evil 
consequence which they recognize. In our Lord's 
parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man 
being in torment wishes to save his brothers, who 
are still in the world, from coming to his place, 
and so implores Abraham to send Lazarus to give 
them warning. He knows the good, and he 
wishes others to follow it, even if he is past help- 
ing for himself. It is related of Mr. Hume, the 
English historian, philosopher and free thinker, 
that on one occasion he hesitated to follow his 
skeptical theories to their logical conclusion. He 
had been quite outspoken in his deistical senti- 
ments one. evening, when a young man in the 
company asked him, supposing he had a sister, if 
he would be willing to teach her such doctrines. 
He hesitated to reply and was pressed for the 
answer. Let it be remembered to Mr. Hume's 
credit that he yielded the point graciously by say- 
ing, "Infidelity is rather a sturdy virtue for a 
woman." 

Ethan Allan of Vermont, the hero of Ticon- 
deroga, was of the like mind when the question 
touched his own daughter. He had been a pro- 
nounced unbeliever. His daughter lay dying, and 
as she was facing the unknown future, she asked 
him if she was to believe as he had taught, or as 
her mother had taught her. With streaming eyes 
he bade her follow her mother's faith. 

Solomon, the author of the text, was able to 
speak for both classes; for the good, who have 
enjoyed the benefits of goodness, and for the bad, 



48 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

who have felt the pains of sin. In his early life 
he had been a model of princely piety, and when 
he was elevated to the throne, for a time he wield- 
ed the scepter of righteousness and wisdom with 
such loyalty to God that his fame for goodness 
overspread the ancient east. Afterward, sorrow- 
ful to relate, he relaxed the restraints of good 
conduct. He turned aside from the worship of 
the true God and drank to their depths every cup 
of unhallowed pleasure. And so it is out of both 
experiences, out of the personal conviction of the 
blessedness of righteousness, and also out of the 
personal conviction of the vanity of sin, that he 
declares at the close of this same chapter that 
there is but one sound rule of life. "Let us hear 
the conclusion of the whole matter," so he says, 
"Fear God and keep his commandments; for this 
is the whole duty of man." 

It is a man like this who out of his own mani- 
fold experiences gives counsel as to the best time 
to enter upon the service of God. It is to be in life's 
morning hour, while the heart is still pure, and 
when the page of conduct, like the lamb at the 
altar, is still without spot or blemish. Then it is 
in the joy time of youth that the soul should be 
devoted to its supreme love ; not to business cares 
or worldly distractions, but first and foremost to 
God. And this counsel he gives us in such classic 
phrase, that its echo lingers on the memory like 
the sound of clear bells at eventide, or like a strain 
from the angelic choir, "Remember!" "Remem- 
ber now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, 
while the evil days come not, nor the years draw 



FAITH CONFIRMED IN YOUTH 49 

nigh when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in 
them." 

"Remember now thy Creator." Remember! 
Remember! Remembrance of the Creator here 
obviously implies recognition of the Divine 
authority; consideration that God is near, and 
that He is concerned in all our plans, in all our 
activities, in all our diversions. 

I am quite convinced that so much about us is 
at loose ends, as one might say, because the heart 
has lost sight and thought of God. Men get 
astray, not so much of set purpose, not because 
they deliberately plan to raise the arm of rebellion 
against the Most High; but because they are 
adrift, and because they keep on drifting without 
heeding the strength of the current, which is a 
constant force flowing in the wrong direction. 

There are people who are breaking the Sab- 
bath ; who turn the Day of God into a season for 
social visitations, for excursions, for travel, for 
sport. Are they all defiant transgressors? 
Hardly so. Possibly at the first they fell into a 
careless way, and the carelessness has grown upon 
them. They took a stroll of a Sabbath afternoon 
in the Park, or out into the country lanes and 
fields. Soon the walk became a drive with a lively 
horse and pleasant company. Step by step this 
goes on till the church with its worship, and the 
Sabbath day itself, are habitually neglected. That 
is one side of the history of Sabbath breaking. 
But the other side of it is that the heart had lost 
sight and remembrance of God; for if God had 
been in mind there would have been no chance for 
the drift to begin. 



50 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

You may trace the rise and progress of what is 
termed "worldiness" in much the same way. 
Worldliness is simply the spirit that guides its 
conduct by current standards of occupation or 
enjoyment, without regard to the higher stand- 
ards imposed by religion. Many who yield to this 
spirit cannot be said to desire to be classed with 
the wicked. In a merry circle some one utters a 
sprightly jest that cuts at the roots of a spiritual 
faith. Shall we assume that the speaker designed 
to rank himself with the scoffers and to earn the 
title of "infidel?" Not so, at least not so com- 
monly. In the most of such instances the jester 
had not calculated results and consequences. He 
imagined a bright conceit, and he spoke it out as 
his contribution to the moment's entertainment. 
When the gay laugh went round his purpose was 
satisfied, and he dismissed it from thought as if it 
were all done and ended. But it was not so done 
and ended. Nothing in the world really has an 
end. All that we say or do has results and conse- 
quences which keep widening on and on for ever. 

I remember when the city of Portland in Maine 
was known as the Forest City from the glory of 
its ancient elms, which were among the most mag- 
nificent in the land. On a Fourth of July a lad 
who was bent on a rousing celebration flung a fire- 
cracker into pile of shavings. Did he intend to 
cause a general conflagration? Never harbor 
such a suspicion. But a high wind was blowing, 
and the flames spread, and wherever they were 
driven by the force of the gale the elms were 
scorched and blasted, a quarter of the city was 
smoldering in ashes, and hundreds of the people 



FAITH CONFIRMED IN YOUTH 51 

were without a roof to shelter them. The thought- 
less man who utters some mocking witticism at 
the expense of religion is something like that. 
Could he trace the ultimate results he would find 
them infinitely mischievous. For the first, some 
Christian heart has been deeply wounded, and 
there is nothing in that for which to plume one's 
self. Then some other is certain to pick up the 
jibe and pass it along to cause further harm; and 
there is surely no profit there. But what touches 
most closely home is this, that the soul that first 
flew that poisoned shaft was hardened in the act, 
and was the more inclined to do the like again. 
Here too God had been forgotten. Had that young 
man remembered God, he would have had no 
inclination to make mockery of religion. 

Remember! Remember! Remembrance often 
lays on us the tender hand of restraint. With 
almost any man, old or young, who has ever been 
blessed with a good mother, you may be sure that 
the one chord in his soul that will be responsive 
longest is that which recalls the pure saint who 
crooned his cradle song, who guarded his youthful 
steps, and who has followed him through the 
years with the gentle influence of her love and her 
daily prayers. Many a young fellow in these 
enticing cities all through the land will enter into 
some reckless diversions, and will go with his 
rollicking companions a part of their way, but 
stop short at some line which he has fixed in his 
mind. Right there is his limit, and no urgent 
persuasions, no mocking dares, will get him 
beyond it. What has given him the courage of 
such resistance? Back yonder is the home, and he 



52 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

means when he returns to it, and mother comes 
out to greet him, and when she throws her arms 
about his neck, and her dear eyes look so search- 
ingly into his, that he shall be able to return that 
look without flinching; and to do that he must 
keep his soul free and pure from flagrant sin. It 
is in such a way as that, the way in which we 
remember our mother's greeting, that we are to 
remember God. Simply to have Him in mind, to 
realize that no act of ours is unknown to Him, no 
secret hid; to have Him in mind in our business 
pursuits, in our enterprises, in our recreations, 
will of itself correct our follies and render us more 
responsible in all our relationships. 

"Remember now thy Creator." Our remem- 
brance of God is also to include thought of Him 
as the Maker of heaven and earth, and the boun- 
tiful Giver of every good and perfect gift. All 
that we have and are, with every one of us, comes 
through His sovereign mercy. The leaders of the 
world, the statesmen, the generals who have com- 
manded great armies and won great victories, 
may sometimes imagine that they have fashioned 
their own destiny ; and yet it is God who lifts up 
and casts down, who opens the door of oppor- 
tunity, and who bestows the traits that win suc- 
cesses. It is God who guards, and cares for, and 
blesses the little child. Here is a lad who enjoys 
the comforts of a prosperous and happy home. He 
is his father's pride ; his mother's idol. But with 
all that delightful home protection, that boy must 
still thank God for everything. God has given 
him that loving father, and that cherishing 
mother, and has spared them to him from day to 



FAITH CONFIRMED IN YOUTH 53 

day. God has given him what strength he has, 
both of body and of mind. God is the builder of 
that world of beauty and of opportunity, which 
opens out before him; a world whose spreading 
landscapes tell of fruitful sowings and ample 
harvestings, and whose spangled dome overhead 
in its every twinkling star proclaims the glory of 
the hand that fashioned them. Every drop of 
dew that trembles on a blade of grass is the gift 
of God. Any child that springs from his couch 
on a spring morning to look out from his window 
upon the trees crowned with fragrant blossoms, 
who feels the pulses of the springtide leaping in 
his veins, the pulses that are working in all the 
forces of nature, must realize that it is God who 
is in all this new life, creating and recreating. 
And the God who is revealing Himself in this way 
in the material world, has also been revealing 
Himself in the care of His people, in His revela- 
tions to patriarch and prophet, and in the record 
of that revelation which we have in His holy book, 
the Bible. Some men fail to see God in that 
book, and they are ready to fling it away. But 
the book will remain long after those who deride it 
are gone and forgotten. Do you remember Dr. 
Clifford's little poem on the Bible? 

Last eve I paused beside a blacksmith's door, 
And heard the anvil ring the vesper chime; 

Then looking in, I saw upon the floor, 

Old hammers worn with beating years of time. 

"How many anvils have you had," said I, 

"To wear and batter all those hammers so?" 

"Just one," said he; then said with twinkling eye, 
"The anvil wears the hammers out, you know." 



54 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

And so I thought the anvil of God's word 
For ages skeptic blows have beat upon; 

Yet, though the noise of falling blows was heard, 
The anvil is unharmed — the hammers gone. 

Yes, God is the author of His book, which is 
still to be the comfort of the faithful from genera- 
tion to generation. And He is the author of all 
this world poem of beauty and gladness, in blazing 
star, and tossing seas, and fruitful fields, and joy- 
ous life, and sweet companionships ; and shall we 
not praise Him for the ten thousand thousand 
precious gifts ? 

But praise to God is worship. The child that 
looks up gratefully to say, "I thank thee, Heavenly 
Father, for a beautiful day," has performed an act 
of worship. When he bends the knee for his even- 
ing prayer and says, "Heavenly Father, I bless 
thee for another day of home, and of happiness," 
he has performed an act of worship. Remem- 
brance of God that recognizes His mercies and 
lifts the voice of thanksgiving is worship. 

But remembrance of God that is worshipful 
should advance to the service of open attachment, 
of avowed profession and allegiance. When Jacob 
met Rachel at the well and loved her at sight, it 
was nothing for him to devote seven years of his 
life as a herdsman that he might win her as a 
bride ; and when after all that period she was not 
given him, he could serve for her still seven years 
more. In that history you have an instructive 
parable. The right remembrance makes no 
reserves of service. It does not figure up the 
years or the days of sacrifice. God has given us 
everything and shall we be so ungrateful as to 



FAITH CONFIRMED IN YOUTH 55 

return Him nothing? All over the land we are 
flying the American ensign over the school-houses. 
What does it signify ? You are training the chil- 
dren to the virtue of patriotism. You are having 
them cherish the pride of citizenship, of a share in 
the nationality of a great country. You explain to 
them what the flag means to them in the way of 
nurture and protection, and tell them of the open 
chances of life in the best country for a young 
man or a young woman that the sun shines on. 
And what do you expect of those children after 
you have taught them all that? Suppose you take 
some boy on a foreign trip and over there on that 
foreign shore some one points to the American flag 
floating over an American ship in that foreign 
harbor and asks him what he knows about that. 
Would it please you if he were to turn his back on 
that American flag and say that he had no concern 
about it. If he did that I suspect that you would 
tell him that he deserved to be like Philip Nolan, 
the man without a country; that he deserved to 
have America repudiate him forever. 

And then shall man, the child of God, the recip- 
ient of His daily bounty, turn his back upon his 
Creator, condemn His religion and declare that the 
service of God is no concern of his. It cannot be. 
The heart that remembers will worship. The 
heart that worships rightly will worship openly; 
will acknowledge God and make it known to all 
men that he is with the church of Jesus Christ 
heart and soul in helping to extend the power and 
glory of His kingdom on the earth. 

"Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy 
youth." Solomon here is insisting that the right 



56 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

time to be thinking about God, and shaping one's 
course in obedience to the divine will, is in the 
budding time of childhood. Possibly this has not 
always been the general view. When you touch 
the actual profession of religion, and the acknowl- 
edgment of God by union with the church, I sus- 
pect that many have regarded that matter as of 
such serious import, as carrying with it such 
grave issues, that it were better postponed till the 
judgment of the child has ripened, and its definite 
purposes are better assured. And in accordance 
with that view, in many communities and 
churches the practice has become fixed of telling 
the children about God and the Bible, but of not 
expecting them to enter upon the Christian pro- 
fession till they have knocked about the world and 
seen life in all its sorts and phases, and so be able 
to make the supreme choice for themselves with- 
out suspicion of bias or undue influence in any 
way. But Solomon does not consent that this is 
the line of wisdom. He urges that youth shall 
remember God in the day of the soul's strength, 
and while it is free from the chain of evil habit. 
This is what he means when he urges acceptance 
of God "while the evil days come not, nor the 
years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no 
pleasure in them' 9 He has a vision, you perceive, 
of the infirmities of age creeping on ; of the diffi- 
culty of finding God, if one lingers till the eye is 
dim, and the golden bowl is ready to be broken, 
and the pitcher is ready to be broken at the cis- 
tern. God is just as willing to save a man in the 
time of his old age, but the man himself is not so 
willing. It requires strong resolution for the man 



FAITH CONFIRMED IN YOUTH 57 

who has neglected God all his life to turn to Him 
at the last in the burden and weakness of age. All 
the pride of his heart rebels against altering his 
ways; against confessing that his course all 
through the years has been a sorry mistake. It 
is a pitiful situation! May the good Lord spare 
any of us from the necessity of a struggle like 
that! 

And remembrance of God belongs to youthtime, 
because that is the time of purity and innocence. 
It is a precious offering to God when a Samuel, or 
a Timothy approaches the Father, with his soul 
undefiled by the fact or by the knowledge of sin, 
and says submissively, "Speak Lord, for thy serv- 
ant heareth." No doubt there is rich promise for 
the guilty sinner. No doubt but that Christ will 
save to the uttermost all that come unto God by 
Him. The promises of the Gospel are very broad. 
The worst sinner in this city, God has mercy for 
him if he will repent and turn from his evil way. 
But with grievous sin there are always two ques- 
tions; the first, will the sinner be willing to for- 
sake his wicked way; and the second, how much 
better if he had never fallen into the way that he 
must forsake! And the young, who begin the 
service of God early, escape all that. Memory has 
no dark plague spots which they dread to recall, 
remorse no sting 

For sins committed while conscience slept. 

Instead, they have the joy of looking back upon 
the years spent in the Master's service ; years each 
of which has some good fruitage of help to man, 
and for God's great glory. 



58 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

But remembrance of God in youth is best for 
another most important reason, for it is the day 
of most natural and easy service. It is the period 
when the hand goes most readily with the heart, 
when action is coincident with impulse. The 
hands are free from the shackles of vain or mis- 
chievous habit. The soul has not yet acquired the 
inclination of delay, of saying, "To-morrow," 
"To-morrow," that to-morrow that never comes. 

In this congregation there are grey-haired 
Christians who began the service of God so early 
in life that they can hardly remember when they 
made their decisive choice ; and if you were to ask 
them about it, they would tell you that they had 
scarcely any struggle at all when they made their 
resolve to follow the Master. And they are always 
thankful to the dear parents and friends who 
counseled them, and helped them to make this 
early choice. 

You students in this college, who have made the 
better choice and are standing faithful in your 
Christian profession, should daily thank the 
Father for His mercy in bringing you into the 
goodly fellowship of His people. 

And if there be one student here who has not as 
yet taken this stand and placed himself decisively 
with the people of God, may I urge upon him the 
duty which he owes himself to turn his mind 
toward the great concerns of the faith, to search 
for the truth till the glory of the divine mercy 
bursts upon him, to remember his Creator in the 
days of his youth, while the evil days come not, 
nor the years draw nigh, when he may say, "I 
have no pleasure in them." 



FAITH THE GUARDIAN OF YOUTH 



IV. 

FAITH THE GUARDIAN OF YOUTH 

St. Luke 15 : 18 — "I will arise and go to my father." 

IN this beautiful parable of the prodigal we find 
once more an apt illustration of the well-known 
truth that in all human development, however 
we may surround the young with aids to mental 
or moral culture, their greatest advances occur 
less frequently by quiet progression than by sud- 
den leap and surprise. Call life, if you will, a jour- 
ney. It is that. But how seldom is it an even 
journey, a pushing on over the level and beaten 
highway. More often we find it a mountain 
scramble, with broad levels here and there, but 
with many sharp pitches and many a rapid climb. 

Note this in the child's physical development 
You think of him as growing up gradually, but 
when you recall the facts you will remember with 
that child a period when month followed month 
with nature suspending her efforts. In bewil- 
derment you asked yourself why in the world 
that child did not grow. But just as you were 
giving it serious attention, all at once nature 
rallied her energies, and the boy shot up and 
gained more inches in a half year than he had 
made in two or three years before. In moral and 
spiritual development we experience similar 



Defiance College, Ohio, March 1, 1914. 



62 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

arrests and advances, and sometimes to a more 
noticeable degree. Concede all that may be 
claimed for the benefit to be derived from good 
influences and associations. They are essential, 
but when we are saying that we are by no means 
admitting that their effects will be uniform. 
There are periods when their momentum seems to 
be stored away and to be to all appearance latent. 
Day succeeds day and that young soul displays the 
same narrow outlooks, enjoys the same round of 
pleasures on the same low plane, indulges the 
same restricted views and ignoble hopes ; and then, 
in a moment when least expected, that child's 
nature expands. What was the occasion? Possi- 
bly a bit of travel, or a new friend, or a stimulat- 
ing book, or an inspiring thought. The boy awak- 
ens. To our wonder he has more in him than we 
would have believed; a riper judgment, a keener 
insight, a larger sense of fitness and responsibility. 
We meet with similar movements in our own 
lives. With all of our attainments, what we know 
least of all is ourselves. We know better the 
secrets of the earth ten miles down, than the 
secrets of our own hearts. Who of us is able to 
forecast his feelings with certainty a month ahead, 
or even for a day? Is it not the fact with nearly 
all of us, that in our fickleness of disposition we 
are turning this way and that, following the 
chance currents that blow here and there, like the 
vanes on the steeples? Some interest appeals to 
us in which we have never admitted that we had 
interest and to which we have acknowledged no 
claim whatever. To-day we resent its approach as 
an intrusion and an impertinence, and yet to-mor- 



FAITH THE GUARDIAN OF YOUTH 63 

row our whole attitude toward it has undergone 
revolution, so that what we once ignored we are 
eager to conciliate ; so that the very people whom 
we were holding at arm's length now seem essen- 
tial to our happiness. 

Such change as this we remark in the story 
of the prodigal. Here is a young man who was 
infatuated to see the world, who must see it, and 
who after his wanderings has discovered its folly 
and emptiness, and now yearns with all his soul 
for a glimpse of the old home. Doubtless a short 
time back, while he was carousing with his giddy 
companions, he would have derided the thought 
that such an emotion could ever stir his heart. He 
then was priding himself on his determination, on 
his stoical self-control. But he did not know him- 
self. Down deep in his soul there were springs of 
love which he could not see, and whose extent was 
unfathomed. "When he came to himself!" How 
significant the phrase, the tides of love burst forth 
in a generous flood, on whose strong current he 
was borne back to restoration of manhood, and to 
his old place in his father's bosom. 

This alteration of character, this opening out of 
life into larger fulness, comes often, as in the para- 
ble, with the soul's consciousness of deprivation 
and loss. It was "when he began to be in want" 
that the prodigal came to realize the comfort of 
home, its plenty, its protection, its cherishing love. 
What is this want? In the parable it was poverty. 
The wanderer had come to the end of his 
resources. When he left home with his portion of 
the family property in his possession he had imag- 
ined that he had ample supply for his every need. 



64 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

He had indulged all his passions and caprices. He 
had flung away his patrimony with spendthrift 
hand till all was gone and he was in extremity. 
His gay companions, who were so friendly while 
they were roystering at his expense, deserted him 
at once when his cash was gone, and now he 
suffers from loneliness and also from actual hun- 
ger. It was torturing want, chilling and desper- 
ate, which drove this wanderer to think of his 
father's table which he had forsaken, and of his 
father's love which he had despised. But we are 
not to fall into the crass error of imagining that 
one must be in absolute destitution to be in want. 
Poverty has its gradations, and it can pinch the 
soul long before one descends into uttermost 
penury. Define wealth not as plenty in the abso- 
lute, but plenty as measured by the scale of 
expenditure that is common in the social life in 
which one is moving. Sir Walter Scott was mas- 
ter of Abbottsford, and was attended by his serv- 
ants, and was regarded by his neighbors as a most 
prosperous man, and yet he was struggling nobly 
to beat away reverses with his pen; coining his 
brains into gold to satisfy his creditors, and so we 
see that he was in the stress of poverty. Our own 
Sidney Lanier, that gifted author and poet, was 
doubtless hurried to his grave by the overtoil 
which was necessary to win his bread. He labored 
long hours and died early, a sacrifice to want. 
Very probably some about him were envying him 
his comforts which they could see, but not seeing 
the struggles and worriments which were wearing 
his life away. 



FAITH THE GUARDIAN OF YOUTH 65 

But there is another want which may press 
sharply, even while kindly luxury seems to be fill- 
ing the sufferer's cup of bounty to the brim. We 
have read ancient tales of gold and precious gems 
turning to leaves, or to dust, in the finder's hands, 
and we sometimes think that in these prosaic 
times gold will remain as gold, and that diamonds 
will hold their value whatever may happen. And 
yet it is the fact that one may have money and 
possessions in abundance, and with it all not be 
able to purchase satisfaction in his heart. Ah! 
What an evil sting is this, to lose out of existence 
all that gives it zest ; to have power, riches, pleas- 
ure, and yet while possessing all to suffer the sense 
of utter vanity and emptiness; to lift to the lip 
sweet drafts of art, and travel, and friendships, 
and find that all are tasteless on the tongue. 
Want ! That may mean a healthful appetite, and 
little or nothing on the table; or it may mean a 
groaning table, burdened with every delicacy to 
tempt the palate, and yet no appetite to match the 
abundance. You remember that touching lament 
of Lord Byron. He was a peer of Great Britain, 
enjoying an ample income, a favorite in the great 
capitals of Europe, courted and worshiped as the 
poet of his age, a devotee of pleasure, and yet 
wholly out of tune with life. As he lifts the veil 
we feel that he is laying bare his inmost soul in 
these plaintive lines : 

I loved, but those I loved are gone: 
Had friends : my early friends are fled ! 

How cheerless feels the heart alone 
When all its former hopes are dead. 



66 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

Though gay companions o'er the bowl 

Dispel awhile the sense of ill; 
Though pleasure stirs the maddening soul, 

The heart, the heart is lonely still. 

The heart pines for love. Such is its hunger for 
love that it sometimes is willing to cheat itself 
with the counterfeit. It is thus that you can 
explain the seductiveness of flattery. People will 
fish for compliments, and they get one, even 
though it is obviously unmerited, they will delude 
themselves with the notion that they are well 
thought of. The day looks brighter to them 
because of that false compliment, while a deserved 
rebuke which would help them to better living 
would make a June sky as forbidding as that of 
winter. We must have love. It is a necessity of 
the soul. What cheer to us in any time of struggle 
to know that father, mother, friend, holds us in 
sweet recollection ! We can brave the impossible, 
and bear the unendurable, when we can turn to the 
comforting refuge of home, where pure hearts 
sustain us with unstinted affection. "Better," so 
says Solomon, "is a dinner of herbs where love is, 
than a stalled ox, and hatred therewith" But if 
that be true of earthly loves, how much more true 
is it when we think of the love of God. Where 
other loves encourage, God's love fully satisfies. 
Sometimes I ask myself if it was a trial for Jesus 
to tread the path of perfect, sinless holiness ; and 
then with the light of my Bible on this question I 
find that it was no trial to Him. God's favor was 
His nourishment, as He said, "My meat is to do 
the will of Him that sent me" As the sun is to 
the earth, light-giving, cherishing; so is God's 



FAITH THE GUARDIAN OF YOUTH 67 

favor to us. No poverty in the world is like that 
which is felt when God withdraws the light of His 
countenance. Rather than that, let a man have 
the darkness of Egypt, or the chill polar blast, 
that cuts like a knife, and chokes the current of 
the blood with stinging icicles! Better for Sam- 
son to be at the mercy of the Philistines; better 
for him when they fetter him in the prison, and 
gouge out his eyes, than for God to depart from 
him. Judas hanged himself in his agony of 
despair. But why should Judas despair? He had 
the thirty pieces of silver, the amount of his con- 
tract with the priests of the Temple. As men say, 
he had carried his plans to a successful conclusion. 
But his soul was sitting in thick darkness. He 
was conscious that he had abandoned God, that he 
had cast off the love of God, and when he failed to 
get the High Priest to take back that money and 
release Jesus, he flung down the silver on the 
Temple floor and rushed away to an unhallowed 
death. Sad indeed is this turning away from God, 
this neglect of His word and commandment, this 
drifting out into the frigid atmosphere of worldly 
thought! What jeopardy of happiness! What 
wilful exposure of our highest interests for time 
and eternity ! 

But the parable which expresses the want which 
befell the wanderer was aggravated by the accom- 
paniment of bitter humiliation. What a fall to 
pride! What an expiation does he suffer for his 
self-sufficiency ! In the picture as drawn by Jesus 
he sits with the swine; he tends the swine, the 
most despicable occupation which a Jew could 
imagine : and as if to compel him to wallow in the 



68 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

deepest mire of degradation, he is represented as 
sharing the food of the swine. A swineherd! 
What situation could be more desperate? The 
Jew regarded this animal as an abomination. He 
dreaded the sight of it, and if he came into contact 
with a swine he incurred ceremonial defilement, 
which must be removed by tedious and expensive 
sacrifices. The Jew would not so much as name 
the beast by his name, but mentioned him when he 
had to by a circumlocution, as "Dabar acheer," 
"That other thing." To have anything to do with 
"That other thing" was to be a social outcast, an 
alien, a worse than a publican. And yet to just 
that level the prodigal's waywardness had brought 
him. He had scorned his father, and he is become 
a slave. He turned his back on his father's house ; 
he is day and night in the unsheltered field. He 
forsook the friends and companions of his own 
station, and he is reduced to associate with the 
vilest of the vile. He spurned the bounty of his 
father's table, and in consequence he drops to eat- 
ing carobs with the swine ! 

And what is this but the inevitable outcome 
which awaits all wandering from God ? Prodigal- 
ity, be it in gold, or in time, or in misuse of spirit- 
ual power, is the forerunner of want. I often 
wonder what the angels up yonder think of our 
occupations. They must regard them as profit- 
able or unprofitable, according to their ruling 
purpose. If they are directed by the fear of God, 
the angels will commend them. But if God be 
forgotten, and the heart be set on pecuniary gain, 
or on indulgence, or on mere social triumph as the 



FAITH THE GUARDIAN OF YOUTH 69 

principal thing, how can the angels do less than 
drop the tear of pity ? 

But why this speech of angels ? Simply for this, 
that the present order is merely for a passing day. 
This arrangement which allows the law of God to 
be broken, and His moral government to be defied, 
is evidently temporary and cannot endure. All the 
science of the day is pointing to a single source of 
power ; to a single ruling Mind. In this universe 
there can be but one scepter of dominion, but one 
center of supreme authority, but one line of ulti- 
mate destiny. With this the angels are in com- 
plete accord, and their judgment as to our pur- 
poses and pursuits will be the decision of eternity. 
Whatever enterprises or concerns they do not 
commend must terminate in the long run in dis- 
grace and destruction. Of this we have hint in 
the Bible. Some are there represented who cannot 
bear the sight of the Redeemer's glory. The mem- 
ory of their earthly career affords them no 
comfort, since on the one side it shows utter want 
of service in His cause, or on the other, a startling 
record of audacious transgression. To think of a 
past like that is condemnation enough, and they 
implore that the rocks and mountains may fall 
upon them and hide their sin. 

To the wanderer in his lowly and despairing 
state comes one thought of cheer, that of father 
and of father's house. The parental counsel has 
been neglected, the parental shelter has been left 
behind ; but that invisible tie of parental affection, 
softer than silken cord, stronger than cable of 
twisted steel, remains unbroken. For there is this 
divine power in fatherhood and motherhood, that 



70 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

it never ceases its yearning watch-care for the 
child it has led by the hand, or folded to its bosom. 
The love of a father reaches out past all separa- 
tion, past all misfortune, past all sin, with the 
certainty of the stars. And it is right here that 
we touch the glory of the Gospel in Christ's revela- 
tion of the Fatherhood of God. That love has been 
eternal, for God declares through His prophet 
Jeremiah, "Yea, I have loved thee with an ever- 
lasting love." 

God's love has been provident. So mothers cut 
out and stitch together little garments, singing at 
their labor, and sewing love into every seam. 
Surely not less was that love which planned this 
earth for man's residence and supplied it with 
gifts to meet his every want. I survey these wants 
and they seem endless, but the provision for their 
satisfaction more than keeps pace with the need. 
Before Adam set up housekeeping in Eden the 
earth home was all swept and garnished. The 
whole establishment was furnished indoors and 
out; in earth, and sea, and air. In all the years 
of man's possession, whether many or few, this 
store of treasure has not been exhausted; for 
always as human wants increase new stores of 
bounty are developed and new proofs of the provi- 
dent mercy of our Heavenly Father are displayed. 
The whole earth is filled with His glory. And the 
same providential love is shown in God's care for 
His people. With what merciful kindness He led 
Israel out of bondage ! There were perils of wars, 
perils of famine, perils of the sea, and perils of the 
wilderness, but He directed their way till they 
were safely settled in their new home in the Land 



FAITH THE GUARDIAN OF YOUTH 71 

of Promise. Of a truth God was the Father of His 
people. Nor are we to imagine with some that 
this special leading of Israel was a mark of partic- 
ular favor to the Jew. God was enlightening the 
Jew in order that He might use this race for the 
enlightenment of the rest of the world. So we 
have the word of prophecy in Isaiah, "I the Lord 
have called thee in righteousness, and will hold 
thine hand and keep thee, and give thee for a cove- 
nant to the people, for a light to the Gentiles" 
And there is a like statement in another place, 
where the Lord declares, "/ will also give thee for 
a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my 
salvation unto the end of the earth." 

And so we perceive that the Father's love goes 
out to all His children. He cares for the cultured 
Christian in his comfortable pew, and for the 
hard-worked coolie on the far side of the earth, 
whose back is almost broken under his crushing 
burdens, and for the ignorant African, who 
cringes before his idol of clay in the depths of his 
native forest. Whether Christians of our day 
recognize the fact or not, the God of the New 
Testament is a God of love, and his manifestations 
of Himself have always been manifestations of 
love. So the Gospel represents Him. This parable 
of the prodigal has its motive in declaring the 
changeless Fatherhood of God, the essential attri- 
bute of which is love. And the life of Christ is 
love, the tenderest and most self-sacrificing love 
all the way from before the foundation of the 
world, down to the incarnation, the manger, the 
cross, and the publishing of the Gospel. And this 
wonderful love of God follows every one of us, and 



72 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

encompasses in its embrace every one of us. We 
may not have heard the voice with Abraham, nor 
seen the fiery bush with Moses, nor crossed the 
Jordan dry shod with Joshua; but all our lives 
have been in His hand. Have we directed our own 
course during all these years of our lives? We 
cannot pretend it. Often there have been periods 
of deep darkness. Events have occurred which 
we have not foreseen and against which we could 
not guard. Sorrows have overswept us, and our 
best laid plans have been thwarted. Often in our 
perplexity there was nothing to be done but to 
stand still and wait. And yet the outcome has 
been good. Time and again we have rejoiced that 
our plans were overturned, and that God's better 
way prevailed. We confess when we think about 
it that the Hand that has guided the bark of our 
destiny has been that of infinite tenderness, mercy, 
and love. 

While considering his want, his humiliation, and 
the hopelessness of his present case, the prodigal 
turns toward the home he deserted and quickly 
reaches determination. "/ will arise/' so he says, 
"and go to my father" 

In this firm utterance, "I will arise," his new 
life begins. With that word the single barrier 
that has shut out his father's help is broken down. 
What keeps God out of many a soul is never dis- 
tance, never isolation, never want ; it is always the 
obduracy of the will. That is what Paul teaches 
when he declares that nothing in time or eternity, 
nothing in life or in death, can separate us from 
the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 
All that is without ourselves is powerless to part 



FAITH THE GUARDIAN OF YOUTH 73 

God from us, provided only that our own soul rests 
in Him. 

Every human tie may perish, 

Friend to friend unfaithful prove; 

Mothers cease their own to cherish, 
Heaven and earth at last remove, 

But no changes 
Can avert the Father's love. 

If at the last any one of us remains away from 
God, the guilt of it will lie, not against the Father, 
but against that stubborn will of our own which 
we would not subdue. In an old Irish folk-tale 
some fugitives who were evading pursuit flung on 
the ground a grain of corn, and it became a wide 
river behind them ; and when the chase was becom- 
ing hot again they flung another, and it became a 
lofty mountain range between them and their ene- 
mies. And this will of man, invisible, intangible, 
impalpable, can resolve itself into a barrier, wider 
than the Amazon, deeper than the Atlantic, loftier 
than the stars. What are all these pretexts and 
excuses so often given by people who are arguing 
themselves into living aloof from God? Search 
them all through and they are found to be nothing 
but obduracy of will. The Will is averse. It is 
intractable, unsubmissive, impenitent. It was a 
blessed change when the wanderer said to himself, 
"I will arise. ,, With that resolve all difficulties 
vanished. His heart is lighter at once. He does 
not stand on the order of his going. He is ready 
to accept any sacrifice, and to live if necessary as 
one of his father's hired servants. And so, my 
friend, if you are now seeking God, make no delay. 



74 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

Come to your resolve quickly. Say, "I will arise 
and go to my father." 

I'll go to Jesus, though my sin 

Hath like a mountain rose; 
I'll know His courts, I'll enter in, 

Whatever may oppose. 

How may the wanderer now come to the 
Father? Now, exactly as in the olden time, by 
submission and reconciliation. First there is the 
resolve ; then the cry of penitence, "Father, I have 
sinned against Heaven and in thy sight." First, 
the casting of self on the Father's mercy : then the 
kiss of love. First, the restoration to sonship: 
then the privileges of sonship ; the ring, the robe, 
the festival. 

Coming to the Father then is first and foremost 
coming to righteousness. In this life we are in the 
thick of the conflict, and in the rush and sweep of 
it we must strike for the good or for the evil. 
Unless we are held by some strong tie of principle, 
how easy it will be for those who are young to 
strike for the wrong! How easy the leaning 
toward the doubtful and the questionable! How 
difficult to choose the straight-forward path ! We 
know that every inclination toward the lesser 
good, though it be the slightest, every excuse 
uttered or imagined for a moral lapse, weakens 
the moral nature. Whenever the soul revolts from 
wrong, when it struggles to attain the good and 
the true, when it pursues the high and noble ideal, 
even though it may sometimes be groping blindly, 
yet in the effort it is approaching God. 

Another step in coming to the Father is the 



FAITH THE GUARDIAN OF YOUTH 75 

acknowledgment of constituted authority. We all 
realize then there is a divine Lawgiver and a divine 
law. This divine law is the expression of God's 
purpose. In His kingdom the Almighty is auto- 
cratic. This is not charging that He is harsh, or 
tyrannical ; it is only saying that He governs, and 
that because His right is the right, His law must 
be supreme. And it is a law that will be main- 
tained. Were it a fast and loose law, a law that 
could be operated by fits and starts, the lawbreak- 
ers themselves would despise it. The devils whom 
it uncaged would point the finger of scorn at a law 
which was incompetent to circumscribe their rav- 
age and rebellion. But they have no such occa- 
sion. When the Son of Man walks the earth in all 
His sublimity of meekness and gentleness, the 
devils laugh not, they tremble. The good take the 
attitude of submission to the divine law. I am 
much interested in a definition of faith which is so 
unusual as to be worth noting. We have often 
imagined faith to be merely confidence, trust, 
belief. It is all that and a great deal more, for a 
true faith includes the spirit of obedience. So 
Prof. Godet has said wisely, "Faith is not a 
thought or a desire ; it is an act which brings two 
living beings into personal contact." Such is the 
faith which is so beautifully eulogized in the 
Epistle to the Hebrews, the faith of the fathers. 
That was faith in action. It was faith working. 
It was belief impelling obedience. Whoever comes 
to that point, that he submits to the divine law, 
not merely because he thinks that it will bring him 
pleasure, but because it is the divine law, the 
expression of the will of God, is surely coming to 



76 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

the Father. And this is why the real Christian 
needs so little urging to incline him to the ordi- 
nances of the church. He sees them, the ordinance 
of baptism, the ordinance of the Lord's Supper, as 
expressions of the will of the Master for His disci- 
ples of every age. He is submitting to that will in 
all things ; and so with no urging he exclaims with 
the man who was converted in the desert, "See, 
here is water, what doth hinder me to be bap- 
tized ?" 

But coming to the Father is also coming into 
sympathy with God. The apostle is reaching after 
this thought when he declares that we are laborers 
together with God. Count it all the difference in 
the world between laboring for, and laboring with. 
In some business house one man works for the 
salary, and he does just as little as he can and keep 
himself on the pay-roll. If he can neglect some 
duty without reproof, he feels that he has man- 
aged well. It is for such eye-servants that employ- 
ers are compelled to set up machines to tell when 
the employees come to work, and when they leave. 

But true men do not give occasion for such con- 
trivances. They are anxious for the success of the 
business : they look after affairs as if the business 
were their own : they labor with rather than for. 
In a clumsy way this may illustrate the relation 
of the Christian with God. He comes to God to 
give what help he can in this great enterprise of 
the world's redemption. In this relationship it is 
possible to be attached nominally to the forces of 
the kingdom, while one's sympathies are mainly 
with the world. God is not pleased to have it after 
that fashion. He calls for His servant's life, but 



FAITH THE GUARDIAN OF YOUTH 77 

He calls no less earnestly for that servant's heart. 
I do not imagine for an instant that I comprehend 
all the necessities of action, speech, and influence 
which are set in motion to bring one soul out of 
darkness into the light. But this I do know, that 
all which God has ordained and arranged in this 
direction is useful ; and I am intending by His help 
to place myself in the fullest sympathy with it; 
always if I am able to understand its whole drift 
and tendency; always just as much whether I 
understand it or not, provided it is God's arrange- 
ment. There is very much in this thought of sym- 
pathy with God. Men are not to be judged in the 
hereafter altogether by what they say or do. They 
must be estimated in connection with all their 
surroundings, and by the main purpose in their 
hearts. Should we neglect this principle we might 
easily fall into the error of declaring one man near 
God, when in fact he is far away ; or of declaring 
of another that he is far away, when in the sight 
of God the situation is just the reverse. The one 
may seem to be near the temple, but he has his 
back to it, and with every step he is leaving it 
farther behind him. Another may be judged at a 
greater distance, but his face is set heavenward, 
and every step is taking him nearer home. 

The question of our relationship to the Father 
comes near to us all. I have but the one voice for 
the member of the church, and for the non- 
member. We are all in the one case. We are all 
exposed to the world sorrow and the world evil, 
and are all in need of the Father's protection and 
love. We can be sure that the soul has no peace, 
no satisfaction, no comfort so long as it is apart 



78 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

from God. Out there with the prodigal are want, 
humiliation, grief, and homeless destitution. We 
all desire the Father's kiss and his warm embrace. 
If there has been the least departure from His 
love, may this day be marked by our return. 

For every one who comes back there is a prom- 
ise. The love of God is a boundless sea which can 
wash every penitent clean. Say then to-day, this 
very moment, "I will arise and go to my Father." 



FAITH DIVINELY SIMPLE 



v. 

FAITH DIVINELY SIMPLE 

Galatians 1: 11, 12 — "But I certify you brethren that 
the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. 
For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, 
but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. " 

IT is clear to the most casual reader of the 
Galatian epistle that it is a polemical document, 
a plea for the true Gospel against the inroads 
of all false and man-made gospels, an assertion of 
Paul's apostolic authority in the face of opposers 
and traducers, an appeal to the Galatian churches 
that they hold fast to the liberty wherewith Christ 
had made them free, and to avoid falling again 
under the "yoke of bondage' ' from which they had 
happily escaped. 

Now, in all this extended argument which runs 
throughout the epistle several things are apparent. 

First, there is indication that the apostolic 
church had some very troublesome problems to 
solve, and beside all its struggle with heathendom 
that it was compelled to battle with the twin foes 
of indifference and disaffection within its own 
body. I am suspecting that we are far from real- 
izing this phase of church history. We have often 
sympathized with the distresses of those early 
saints. Our hearts have ached for them as we 



Elon College, N. C, February 22, 1914. Defiance 
College, Ohio, February 21, 1915. 



82 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

have read of their being cast into prison, or stoned 
by raging mobs, or exposed in the arena to the 
fangs of savage beasts; and we have frequently 
consoled ourselves with the thought of the solace 
they must have experienced in the bosom of the 
church, sustained by the support and sympathy of 
their loving brethren. 

But when we look into it we fail to see that they 
enjoyed all that peace and heavenly sunshine in 
the bosom of the church, that we have so fondly 
imagined. As we follow the record, and as we 
interpret some significant passages in the epistles, 
we discover that the membership of the early 
church was human, very human indeed. Strange, 
is it not, how the trail of the serpent of earthly 
passions will defile the holiest places? Into that 
camp of Israel in the wilderness came the mur- 
murs of discontent and rebellion. The pure pres- 
ence of the holy Jesus, ineffably holy, did not hush 
the wranglings of envious disciples, who disputed 
with each other over the chief seats of a kingdom 
that was still to come. 

And so in the early church there arose the harsh 
clamor of partisanship. , Some declared them- 
selves for Paul, and some for Apollos, and some 
for Cephas. And others were ready to profane 
the sacred name of the Master by making it the 
slogan of a faction. No, that early church had its 
struggles and contentions both from without and 
from within. You cannot picture it as enjoying 
the calm tranquillity of a summer lakelet, bloom- 
ing with lilies under a cloudless sky. If at any 
period of that age we discover any record of ster- 
ling virtues, or any beautiful spirit of devout con- 



FAITH DIVINELY SIMPLE 83 

secration, it is because the noblest souls among 
them emulated the love and patience of their 
Master, and because having been schooled in the 
gentleness of Jesus they had learned to bear and 
to forbear. 

From all this we are able to draw the natural 
inference, since it was not all quietude and perfect 
calm in the apostolic church, that it is idle to 
expect a more restful experience under the present 
dispensation. The battle changes front, but the 
conflict continues from age to age. The church 
militant is one thing and the church triumphant is 
quite another ; and so long as the church is on the 
earth it has no greater danger to dread than the 
incoming of the insidious error, that while it is 
militant it can assume the tranquil state of the 
church triumphant in glory. 

Possibly it is not generally understood why 
Jesus was hated so intensely by the people of 
Judea, and hated at every point of contact. Was 
it because He was such a firebrand? Was it 
because He was such a kindler of strife ? Not so. 
He was peace itself, the Prince of Peace. But the 
spotlessness of His perfect purity showed the 
sharpest possible contrast between Himself and 
the prevalent disorders and vices. Because He 
was so holy and because His time was so persist- 
ently unholy, the conflict between them became 
irrepressible. And so it must ever be. The Gos- 
pel, insofar as it represents a way of life, estab- 
lishes a standard which is vastly higher than the 
current customs and usages. True enough that 
nineteen Christian centuries have wrought great 
progress in manners and morals. The world is 



84 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

better to-day, it has more good men in it, and it is 
on a higher plane than ever before; higher than 
in the apostolic age, and higher than in any 
previous age to which we may refer. But with all 
this advancement there can be no lessening of the 
struggle. Love of purity must increase with the 
degree of purity which we have attained. The joy 
of conquest stimulates to further conquests. The 
more Christlike any one of us may become, the 
more we shall yearn for the full attainment, and 
the more we shall press forward to present the 
whole wide world spotless and blameless before 
our Redeemer. 

The next thing to be noticed in the text is, that 
much of the conflict in the early church, which 
distracted the disciples and weakened their influ- 
ence, originated from the intrusion of doctrines 
that were foreign to the spirit of the Gospel ; from 
the declaration by some of what may be termed 
man-made gospels. 

This was the disturbing feature in the Galatian 
churches. It was the same with the congregations 
that had been planted in Corinth. In Antioch the 
contention that arose originated from the narrow- 
ness of Peter, who after he had been ministering 
to the whole church, to the Gentiles among them, 
as well as to those of strictly Hebrew descent, 
afterward withdrew himself from the Gentile 
converts and confined his labors to the Jewish 
faction alone. All down the ages we discover the 
like; everywhere bigotry and narrowness, and 
these often intensified by the weight of the years. 

Some of the old deceits and subtleties which 
made trouble for the apostles still survive and 



FAITH DIVINELY SIMPLE 85 

even now are exploited diligently. What are 
palmed off upon us now and then as "new faith" 
and "new thought" are frequently merely some of 
the ancient heresies, which have been furbished 
up to suit the whims of the unwary. Because of 
the ready market for such commodities, there are 
always religious teachers who stand ready to offer 
some tenet of the sort that Paul once characterized 
as "philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradi- 
tions of men, after the rudiments of the world, 
and not after Christ." 

And because we do not have the apostles with 
us to give us warning of this kind of danger, it is 
all the more incumbent on us to guard against 
these gospels of human invention, and to distin- 
guish them from the true Gospel, which was given 
us by the revelation of Jesus Christ. 

Approaching then the gospels which are the 
inventions of men, the systems devised by priest- 
craft, which along with their few grains of truth 
present us with bushels of falsification, I may 
remark that with every one of them, even with the 
worst among them, we must expect to find some 
provision that will meet some human want. The 
Chinese coolie who burns gilt papers before his 
joss, or the African bushman who cowers in the 
dust before his clay fetich, in the act is satisfying 
some longing of his nature. His soul is reaching 
out after God, after all the God he knows. In the 
stress of life he desires protection, and he esteems 
that joss, that fetich of clay, to be a visible token 
of the invisible power which he supplicates. Be it 
granted that the system in which he puts his trust 
is false and impudent; nevertheless the impulse 



86 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

that actuates him is real, and the want of his 
nature that produces it is real also. 

It is important for us to understand the force 
of this principle, and that we realize that all the 
false systems that plague poor humanity get their 
footing in the positiveness of some human want. 
They are counterfeits, but the counterfeit always 
owes the ease of its circulation to the fact that 
the reality of which it is an imitation is in active 
demand. A false coin passes because it has the 
stamp and the ring of truth, and what is still more 
to the point, because people desire what the reality 
represents. In trade there is no prospect of dis- 
posing of any commodity before the demand for it 
has been created. Lace curtains I imagine would 
not sell well among the Esquimaux. And so a 
religious system in order to attract attention must 
touch people favorably at some point, else they 
would give it no countenance. The fact that so 
many religious systems endure, and that so many 
of them have such wide acceptance indicates that 
they respond to some human necessity. 

But when we have made that concession, it does 
not follow that their existence is warranted, nor 
does it go to prove that a false system should be 
encouraged by intelligent minds. Explorers in 
the arctic seas, when their food supply has failed, 
have been known to chew leather straps and bits 
of rawhide. But that is not to say that leather 
straps and rawhide are desirable articles of diet. 
It merely goes to show that the men were fright- 
fully hungry. 

So there was a spiritual yearning in Israel when 
Moses had been for weeks in the mountain and 



FAITH DIVINELY SIMPLE 87 

had made no sign of return. Aaron appeased that 
yearning by making a golden calf for the people, 
which they worshiped, but who shall say that 
their yearning warranted that act of idolatry? 
And so we must dismiss the notion, if ever we 
entertained it, that because some religious system 
in some manner touches the hearts of its adher- 
ents it must have the approval of God. In fact, 
that touching the hearts of its adherents at some 
point may be the explanation of why it is keeping 
its adherents from the true religion, which would 
touch their hearts at every point. 

Again, it may be said that among all the false 
and man-made systems of religion, there is none 
but what will somewhere and somehow teach some 
element of truth. The worst among them all will 
present some tenet or doctrine which the enlight- 
ened conscience of Christendom must applaud. 

For this there are several reasons. 

One is, the general prevalence of truth. Truth 
is the general expression of realities, and there is 
divine power behind every fact. The stars in their 
courses do battle for the truth. Never was there 
a liar who was so skilful at the business as to be 
able to tell lies all the time. He might be a verit- 
able Ananias, or a Munchausen, among liars ; but 
for all that, some truth of necessity would have to 
creep in among his clever inventions, from sheer 
weariness of protracted exercise of the inventive 
faculty, and because it would be restful once in a 
while to fall back upon an undisputed fact. 

But there is a better reason for the prevalence 
of truth. For God in His original revelations to 
Adam, and to Noah, and to the patriarchs, im- 



88 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

pressed certain fundamental truths upon the con- 
sciousness of the race so profoundly that all the 
changes of changing time have not sufficed to 
obliterate them from the tablets of memory. 
There are narrations which you will find on the 
clay tablets exhumed from the ruins of Nineveh, 
and that are embalmed in the Vedic poems of the 
Brahmans of India, and in the traditions current 
among the aborigines of the Polynesian archipel- 
ago, which are astonishingly like some things in 
the book of Genesis, and which seem to indicate a 
common origin. 

But there is another consideration; namely, 
that a system of human invention, which its 
author was consciously planning to foist upon the 
credulity of mankind, would probably include 
some truths commonly accepted as such, for the 
purpose of giving weight to his general fabrica- 
tion. A system of lies that is all lies seldom de- 
ceives anybody. The false witness who invents a 
complete situation will break down under skilful 
examination, while the other who perjures him- 
self moderately, just sufficiently to substantiate 
his contention, who weaves strands of truth into 
his web of fiction, has the better chance of befog- 
ging the judge and the jury. 

For such reasons therefore it may be expected 
that man-made religions will hardly be fictitious 
altogether, but rather that they will offer some 
evident truth along with their main body of decep- 
tion and delusion. 

As a convenient example of man-made faiths; 
of religious systems that bear the marks of human 
origin so plainly that all the world who wills may 



FAITH DIVINELY SIMPLE 89 

read, we may note two of the most conspicuous, 
the two that have so many traits in common; 
Mohammedanism and Mormonism. 

We will glance for a moment at Mormonism. 
Where can a so-called religion be found, which 
more clearly deserves the indictment of a man- 
made system, than this pestiferous abomination, 
which lifts its serpent head in the valleys of Utah 
and her surrounding territory? You can trace 
the history of this unclean spawn, cast up by the 
passion and unholy ambition of man. You can 
visit its great temple in Salt Lake City, and its 
endowment house, which is more the shrine of its 
ceremonies than the temple itself. You can go 
from there back to Nauvoo in Illinois; thence to 
Kirtland, Ohio, and thence to Manchester, New 
York, where the first Mormon meeting was held 
and the first organization was effected. You can 
point out the men who invented and developed it ; 
Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and Joseph Tay- 
lor. You can follow Joseph Smith to "the west 
side of a hill, not far from the top, about four 
miles from Palmyra, in the county of Ontario, and 
near the main road," where he pretended to find 
the golden plates, "too dazzling for the world to 
see ;" the mythical basis of the Book of Mormon. 
You can sit with Joseph Smith in that town of 
Manchester, New York, while he hides behind a 
blanket, stretched across the room, to conceal the 
sacred plates from eyes profane, while he dictates 
to Oliver Cowdrey the words he is to write, and 
which constitute the Book of Mormon. 

But even Mormonism, whose beginnings you can 
trace in this fashion ; Mormonism, which is more 



90 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

degrading to womanhood than the zenanas of 
India, or than the harems of Constantinople; 
which cultivates ignorance and stupidity; whose 
revelations and metaphysics are a fanciful 
agglomeration of unmitigated nonsense, will yet 
send forth some stray beams of light along with its 
consummate darkness. For Mormonism teaches 
that there is a God in Heaven: a sublime truth 
that. 

It teaches salvation by faith, the duty of prayer 
and the hope of the resurrection : glorious truths 
every one of them. 

But is Mormonism to be accepted or condoned 
because some truth gleams out from the multiplic- 
ity of its errors? Never! You may find a dia- 
mond in an ashpit, but the one stray gem will not 
transmute the pile of cinders and clinkers into 
jewels of price. 

Those Judaizing teachers who followed in the 
track of Paul, and tried by every wicked slander 
and subterfuge to break down his authority in the 
churches, must in their preaching have uttered 
some sound gospel truths, but that did not hinder 
the apostle from denouncing them as foes of the 
truth, and their teaching as Anathema Maranatha. 

The decisive test by which we are to distinguish 
a man-made faith begins with its manifest errors 
and inconsistencies. Religion is looking toward 
a land unknown. As to the future, and even as to 
the eternal world of the present, we are gazing 
into the mist and shadow. Every thoughtful soul 
is eager to know more of the inscrutable problems 
which face us on every side, and which so baffle 
understanding. Even in this present world the 



FAITH DIVINELY SIMPLE 91 

learning of the hour has barely scratched the sur- 
face of things. As the great Newton declared, we 
have gathered a few pebbles along the shore of the 
ocean of knowledge. And if we know so little of 
the visible universe, so little of what life is, and 
of how it is, what should we expect to know of the 
country that lies beyond the horizon of experi- 
ence? For extending our knowledge it is neces- 
sary for revelation in compassion for our perplex- 
ity to come to our relief and lift the veil. Clever 
speculation and fanciful conjecture in labored 
partnership may erect systems spun from meta- 
physical cobwebs, but their inherent weakness is 
their best refutation. How many ambitious phil- 
osophies; how many brave theories of God, of 
human duty and of our ultimate destiny have 
flourished for a day, only to vanish forever! 
Doubtless some of their originators have sought 
sincerely to mitigate abuses and elevate the social 
order. But the blight of human infirmity was 
upon all their handiwork. It is the Divine Mind 
only which can adapt means to ends in full perfec- 
tion. It requires the Divine Vision to compass the 
round of natural and spiritual obligation, and 
mete to each its own in due order and proportion. 
Consequently it happens that all systems of philos- 
ophy or religion which originate with man are 
miserably complicated; while the one that origi- 
nated with the Divine Mind is divinely simple. 
The human system is burdensome, while the divine 
system is inspirational. The human doctrine 
shackles the soul, but the divine doctrine is a 
ceaseless joy. You remember how the rabbis 
before the coming of Jesus befogged men by their 



92 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

profoundly labored explanations of sacred themes, 
which after all failed to explain anything. But 
when Jesus spoke of the same matters, the dark- 
ness became light, and crooked things were made 
straight, and all who heard were amazed that they 
had not seen it so for themselves. And so to-day, 
whenever a false gospel stands before the people 
and tries to take the place of the true Gospel, the 
true Gospel will be simple, and the false gospel 
will be complicated: the true Gospel will show 
consistency with itself and with the nature of 
things, while the false gospel will display a con- 
geries of inconsistencies and absurdities : the true 
Gospel will commend itself to rich and poor, to 
the learned and the unlearned ; in other words to 
all humanity, while the false gospel will make its 
appeal to cliques and castes, and to the prejudices 
of class distinctions. 

Another clear mark of a man-made system is its 
solicitude for its own welfare. It is intoxicated 
with the wine of its own vanity, and is auto- 
poisoned with the virus of self-interest. It is an 
ominous sign when any religious system exhibits 
as its main anxiety the heaping up of riches, or 
the exaltation of the citadel of its own greatness. 
I like not those heathen oracles of old to which 
came the faithful with questions of the future, and 
where the suppliant with the most precious gift in 
hand secured the kindest response. I like not the 
fanaticism of the priest, nor his greed for gold. I 
like not, as Dryden has it, 

The ambiguous god, who rules the laboring breast; 
And in mysterious words his mind expressed: 
Some truths revealed, in terms involved the rest. 



FAITH DIVINELY SIMPLE 93 

And so I like not those gatherings at night, where 
people sit in darkness, drawn together by hope of 
communicating with the spirits of the departed. I 
make no point now of the frequent exposures 
which occurred, when a too convenient gas jet has 
made wreck of the exhibition, and of the reputa- 
tion of the medium together. All that may take 
care of itself. The chief concern just now is that 
the miracles of a true religion are without money 
and without price. When Jesus turned the water 
into wine at Cana, and when He spoke the word 
which brought the brother of Mary and Martha 
from the dead, nobody was permitted to collect 
an admission fee. When the medium of to-day 
proposes to materialize the spirits who are gone 
and fixes a tariff for the show, that five dollars a 
head, that one dollar a head, stamps the affair as 
a commercial enterprise, a venture of the earth 
earthy. Divinity has no part or lot in commer- 
cialism. 

But the weakness of systems that are false does 
not pause with the feature of finance. Power is 
sometimes more than money, since it confers 
power, and power will produce money. It is a 
sinister token when any religious organization, 
known as such, whether in Utah or anywhere else, 
thrusts itself forward into the arena of public life 
and attempts to manipulate the currents of polit- 
ical favor. What shall be said of a church, small 
or great, which obtrudes itself into the turbid tide 
of party elections? What shall be said of its 
throwing itself as a united mass to accomplish the 
election of representatives and senators in state 
or nation? When any religious body assumes an 



94 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

attitude like that, it gives warrant for the convic- 
tion that it cares less for the public welfare than 
for its own sectarian advantage. I like not this 
passion for self-aggrandizement on the part of 
any religious body. From the experience of the 
ages we are impelled to believe, when we find any 
church seeking to advance its own prospects by 
unhallowed means, when it summons to its aid 
such familiars as force, or persecution, or treach- 
ery, or imposture; when it makes appeal to the 
passions of the multitude; when it drops the 
standard of principle, or shifts its principles for 
the sake of expediency, that in such circumstances 
it writes its own condemnation. The church 
which Christ established was never an end for 
itself: it was the Lord's hand for lifting aloft 
among the nations the light of His life, the glory 
of His word. The church to live for itself! The 
church to take chief thought for itself ! But Jesus 
never lived for Himself, but always for others. 
When His life was threatened, as the Scripture 
says, "He saved not Himself." Ever and always 
it was the right, the truth, before any considera- 
tion of Himself. And so to-day, any system which 
makes pretension of representing the gospel, and 
which deviates by so much as a hair's breadth 
from the unselfishness of Christ; which for the 
sake of securing an advantage for itself falsifies 
a fact, or violates the sacredness of principle, by 
so much betrays itself as a man-made institution, 
and opposed to the true Gospel by the extent that 
it has taken any of these misguided steps. 

Ever and always in the widest possible contrast 
to all man-made faiths, or man-perverted faiths, 



FAITH DIVINELY SIMPLE 95 

appears the true Gospel, which came to Paul, and 
has come to all true believers by the revelation of 
Jesus Christ. 

We find this contrast first in the simplicity of 
the Gospel teaching about Jesus. Now it is a 
most wonderful thought, one of the most amazing 
that ever entered the human mind, that the Divine 
could condescend to become human, that the eter- 
nal Son of God could become the Son of man, that 
the Lord of glory, who created all things, could 
suffer in Gethsemane and on Calvary that He 
might win sinners back to the bosom of the 
Father. Whenever I think of that my soul is lost 
in wonder, love, and praise. To search out all the 
reasons, and define all the relationships of that 
sacrifice of the cross will consume ages of the life 
to come, and will require the instruction of the 
ablest angels who are the professors in the theo- 
logical seminary of the skies. But because this 
fact of the atonement of Jesus has such vital 
connection with the Christian system, and because 
the roots of it strike so deep into the moral gov- 
ernment of God, it has been taught sometimes in 
terms which mystify the intellect and perplex the 
disciple. 

Perhaps it would be well for us to observe that 
there are two kinds of theology ; the kind that is 
metaphysical, and the other that is practical. 
Metaphysical theology searches into the deep 
things of God, but in the maze of its theoretical 
speculations it will require very careful handling, 
such as it may receive from trained professors of 
theology, and from Christians of wide experience, 
whose faithful service under the Master equips 



96 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

them with a store of spiritual facts, by help of 
which they may hold in restraint the vagaries of 
errant fancy. But for inexperience such specula- 
tions are too subtle and profound. And so the 
Gospel approaches men and offers them results 
and not theories; a practical theology, and not a 
treatise on metaphysics. It offers them a divine 
Savior, without bothering to theorize just how He 
is divine, and it pledges the pardon of sins 
on acceptance of Christ as Master and Lord. In 
all the New Testament there is not a word to imply 
that the believer must understand how Christ 
saves him: he is simply to believe and to serve. 
The gospels relate the story of the Savior's birth, 
His life, His death, His resurrection. Nothing that 
the human mind can imagine could be more artless, 
more unstudied, more winsome than the narratives 
about Jesus which the apostles told, beginning at 
Jerusalem, and carrying that message all through 
the Gentile cities. That story of Jesus did not deal 
in mysteries. It presented the clearest facts and 
asked that they be accepted and made the basis of 
corresponding action. In every sermon that the 
New Testament reports the teaching about Jesus 
is of this simple and practical kind. And what 
such instruction accomplished can be seen in the 
amazing growth of the primitive church. The 
scholar and the peasant ; the poor in their poverty, 
and the rich with their comforts, were all able to 
comprehend that. They heard, they believed, they 
committed their all to Jesus. 

The true Gospel is simple in its doctrine respect- 
ing the ministry. But the views of men respecting 



FAITH DIVINELY SIMPLE 97 

the servant who ministers at the altar are not 
simple at all, and frequently they are self -contra- 
dictory. 

In the sight of some the minister is molded of 
superior clay, so that he is inexpressibly finer, 
incomparably holier. If common men are earthen 
vessels, he is fine porcelain and hand-painted by 
the cherubim. 

With others the minister is a sacramental per- 
son, a priest, and as such he is to possess a dignity 
that is all his own, and he is to be accorded special 
homage. Right here we can be certain that we 
are touching matters that are foreign to the 
Gospel. Be it understood that I yield to no man in 
my estimate of the honor and dignity of the Chris- 
tian ministry. To stand in the world as Christ's 
ambassador, to represent the power and holiness 
of His kingdom, to lead men from sin to the 
Savior; all this is more than royal distinction. 
But the honor of it lies not so much in the office 
itself, as in the efficiency with which the office is 
administered. The ministers mentioned in the 
New Testament were laborers in the vineyard, and 
servants of the church for Jesus' sake. And so 
the worthiest consecration to the ministry is not 
the tactual blessing of the bishop, or of the arch- 
bishop, or of the apostle; not the vote of any 
assembly or church council, but what is best of all, 
the blessing of heaven. Search for the very truest 
apostolic succession not in the tactual succession 
through a long line of consecrated prelates reach- 
ing back to Peter and Paul, but in the apostolic 
successes of successful preaching of the Gospel 



98 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

which saves the souls of men. Paul himself was 
comforted when his ministry was recognized by- 
demonstration of the spirit and power. When 
under any man's ministry the church is roused to 
the consciousness of its high privilege, when the 
backsliders repent of their waywardness, and sin- 
ners are converted, read right there a ministerial 
succession that is catholic in the truest sense and 
thoroughly apostolic. Under the Gospel no min- 
istry can be regular till God has given it the bene- 
diction of His grace. 

The true Gospel is divinely simple in its doctrine 
of the ordinances. Here once more we encounter 
the intrusion of man-made doctrine. Men incline 
to multiply ordinances, reading into the list a 
sacrament of marriage, a sacrament of penance, 
a sacrament of extreme unction, not to make 
mention of several more, and you may be assured 
that the apostles never dreamed of some of them 
as belonging in the catalogue of ordinances. 

And others would import into the two beautiful 
ordinances which our Savior instituted meanings 
and relations and limitations, which can be read 
into the New Testament only by violence, and 
which are as far-fetched as they are misleading. 

Some would make of baptism a sort of magical 
rite ; a ceremony which by itself will confer mem- 
bership in the kingdom of God. They represent 
it in effect, if not in set terms, as a washing away 
of the filth of the flesh, which in fact the apostle 
expressly declares that it is not. 

And some would make of the Lord's Supper an 
actual participation in the body and blood of the 



FAITH DIVINELY SIMPLE 99 

Lord; while others still would alter its beautiful 
symbolism of the loving unity of the whole church 
into a clumsy mechanism for expressing content 
or discontent with the opinions of their fellow dis- 
ciples. 

But the real Gospel teaching respecting the 
ordinances quickly clears the air of all these cor- 
ruptions and perversions, which have been intro- 
duced by the pride or the ambition of man. In the 
New Testament baptism is simply the ceremony in 
which the penitent confesses his faith in the Lord 
Jesus. It is the public and evident putting on of 
Christ, the enlistment in His service. And simi- 
larly in the New Testament the Lord's Supper is 
a memorial service; exactly what the Tridentine 
symbol declares that it is not ; a service of love in 
which brother is not to be judging his brother, but 
in which each worshiper is to examine himself, 
and so eat of that bread and drink of that cup, in 
the joyful conviction that he is fellowship with all 
the real disciples of Jesus, and with Christ Him- 
self, the greater brother and Master of us all. 

And the true Gospel is divinely simple in its 
method of making disciples and of receiving them 
into the kingdom. There is no need now to par- 
ticularize as to the various stumbling-blocks that 
have been laid by the art and device of man in the 
path of penitence. Suffice it to say that under the 
preaching of the true Gospel by the apostles 
the people came thronging into the church by the 
hundreds and thousands. When we read of the 
early conversions as told us in the book of Acts, 
and follow the directions given by the apostles 



100 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

themselves to the early converts, the cause of that 
phenomenal ingathering becomes apparent at 
once. They taught that it was the will of God that 
men should be saved; that all could be saved by 
acceptance of Jesus Christ, and that all should 
come to Him by simple faith in Him as Master 
and Lord. Oh, the glory of this salvation by faith ! 
It is not of works, as Paul expressed it, "lest any 
man should boast." It was not by costly offerings 
and sacrifices, which would have turned heaven 
into a club for millionaires. It was not by build- 
ing synagogues or churches, not by penance and 
mortifications of the flesh, but simply and only 
by faith in the Son of God. To accept Christ, to 
follow Christ, to continue in the obedience of 
Christ, this it is to be a Christian. It is possible 
for any friend in this congregation, who has not 
been a Christian, to become one this moment. As 
he sits in this presence he can open his heart to 
the Lord. In the silence of his pew he can vow 
that at the first convenient opportunity he will 
make public profession of his faith. If he does 
that, and if in heart he is sincere in making that 
pledge to Christ, he has become a Christian. 

Could all our churches and ministers in all the 
denominations come to see the divine simplicity 
of the true Gospel, how much more fruitful would 
be their efforts for the conversion of the world 
without. It is not required of them that they 
understand all mysteries and all knowledge to 
become Christians. It is not necessary that they 
soar to the mountain tops of ecstatic beatification, 
or plunge into the depths of cerulean despair in 
order to become Christians. It is not even neces- 



FAITH DIVINELY SIMPLE 101 

sary that they do all things, or think about all 
things, just as you and I do, in order for them to 
become Christians. The one thing essential is 
that they have faith in the Son of God. Whoever 
has that, and proves by his life that his faith is 
actual, is in the kingdom of Christ, and is a fellow 
citizen with the saints. 

I am thanking God daily with all my heart for 
the simplicity of the Gospel as to this concern of 
entering the kingdom, for it places me on friendly 
terms with all true Christians everywhere. The 
true Gospel is broad and winsome. The religion 
which it unfolds is not so much a system as it 
is a life. It aims for results, and it recognizes 
methods only as they are useful to obtain results. 
The Sabbath is for man, and in just so many 
words the Savior declares that man is not for the 
Sabbath. All the rites and ceremonies of the 
church are for the blessing and help of man. All 
its rules and regulations are for the development 
of the best and noblest in human character. God 
is not bound. You remember the tale of the Span- 
ish king who was tortured by his devotion to 
etiquette. He had taken his seat by the open fire, 
and his servants had retired. The fire presently 
began to blaze furiously and the king grew uncom- 
fortable. But in the absence of his personal 
attendants he could not stir from his seat, nor 
could any of his high grandees demean themselves 
by poking the fire or leaving the presence to sum- 
mon a servant. So for two long hours the king sat 
and roasted and toasted, sovereign of Spain, but 
far from being sovereign of himself or of the situ- 
ation. But the God we worship has no perplexing 



102 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

limitations. He is the helper of the helpless, and 
He saves the penitents to the uttermost. Bless 
His holy name for His pure, His simple, His celes- 
tial faith, which points the way to the kingdom, 
and makes the path clear to the weakest of the 
disciples. 



FAITH THAT BUILDS CHARACTER 



VI. 
FAITH THAT BUILDS CHARACTER 

I Corinthians 3 : 10 — "According to the grace of God 
which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have 
laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But 
let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. ,, 

IN the text the apostle assumes as a fact about 
which no one will venture to make denial, that 
the foundation of the Christian faith has been 
laid once for all. As the pioneer missionary 
among the Gentiles he had declared the truths of 
the Gospel. He speaks of these, not for any per- 
sonal adulation, not to plume himself before men 
for his brave endurance of manifold hardships, 
but simply and only to announce the fundamental 
nature of the truths which justified his mission. 
The main facts of the Christian religion; the 
Being of God, His loving providence, His revela- 
tion in His word and in His Son of Christ as 
Redeemer and Savior, all these had been faithfully 
preached and joyfully accepted. The foundations 
had been laid. They were unchangeable, immova- 
ble, the groundwork of all Christian living, the 
encouragement of all Christian endeavor, the basis 
of all Christian hope for this world and for the 
next. 

Beyond this which had been furnished the text 
takes a forward step. The foundation granted, it 



Defiance College, Ohio, June 7, 1914. 



106 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

is not to be left an unfinished ruin, an ugly blot on 
the landscape's beauty, a tale of interrupted enter- 
prise, an unsightly monument of spiritual ineffi- 
ciency and moral bankruptcy. If a foundation, 
then a superstructure. If God laid the foundation 
and seems to have paused at that point, it was 
only in order that man may carry forward the 
work, not by himself of course, but under divine 
assistance and guidance. Upon the basic princi- 
ples stated by the apostle there is to grow up a 
glorious temple of faith and character. With com- 
munities, nations, cities, and neighborhoods it is a 
social structure, the church of Christ. If time 
would permit, it would be pleasant to linger here 
and observe how the great religious movements of 
the ages are outlined, and the limitations of 
their development are established by the material 
and form of the foundations from which they have 
grown. 

But our field for the present discussion is nar- 
rower. The text of course applies directly to the 
broader social movement, but we are warranted in 
taking its principles as they may affect the devel- 
opment of individual character. 

As the apostle has said, the foundation has been 
laid. On this each one of us is to erect the super- 
structure of his personal life. How does that 
work proceed? As to this it is appropriate for 
each of us to ask himself if he has a Christian 
character ; if the character he has is adapted to the 
Christian foundation; if its present condition is 
satisfactory ; whether it is suffering from neglect, 
or misuse, or dilapidation, or if it is advancing in 



FAITH THAT BUILDS CHARACTER 107 

harmonious development, a pledge of personal 
happiness, and an offering well pleasing to God. 

Inquiry of this kind is important, since the 
impulse to human activity is so imperative that 
the process of character building will not pause. 
While there is life it must continue. All life is 
motion. Silence, where shall you find it? Not in 
the forest, for every twig is whispering its tale of 
life, and every streamlet is haunted by the hum 
of insects, and every thicket re-echoes with the 
voice of living creatures, mate calling to mate, in 
the darkness as in the light. 

As for the abodes of men, there is no silence. 
The poets liken our communities to bee-hives, and 
they will sing of the "hum" of the city. All day 
long the coaches and carts and autos rumble and 
whiz over the pavements ; bells are clanging ; whis- 
tles are shrieking; heavy machinery is driving 
with a ponderous roar, and when the night settles 
down, and the stars twinkle from the darkening 
sky, from window to window the lights flash out, 
and in many a home where watchers attend some 
patient sufferer there is the weaker illumination 
of the night lamp which shines till it is shamed by 
the outburst of the dawn. 

An idle child, who ever saw one, unless it were 
ill or asleep ? That child when awake may neglect 
his books, and shirk his tasks, but it is never in 
order to be doing nothing. When he is little he 
chatters in his crib a couple of hours too early for 
his elders, and when he is up he is on the move the 
livelong day. He is like quicksilver, always in a 
quiver, and always ready to run where he is not 
wanted. He jumps, he climbs trees and fences, 



108 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

and tears his clothes, and stones the birds, and 
scares the chickens, and takes a whip to the bee- 
hive, and if by chance he is quiet for half an hour, 
set it down that he is on the way to some serious 
sickness, or else that his brain is plotting what he 
calls "fun," but what his elders name mischief. 
The years come crowding on, but the same impulse 
to activity abides. The hardest thing in the world 
to do is just to do — nothing. Send men out on the 
seas in a whale ship, and when they are running 
down before the trade winds, where there is little 
of pulling and hauling of lines and tackle, the ship 
soon becomes a lazy man's paradise, till the laziest 
man aboard gets sick and tired of laziness. Those 
men will be weaving mats, or scraping the cables, 
or whittling on whale's teeth to bite off the lagging 
end of the day. 

You perhaps have tried resting in vacation time. 
Worn with the strain of unremitting labor, when 
you arrived at the seashore or the mountains, at 
the first you courted repose. You would lie in a 
hammock, or stretch yourself on the beach all day, 
and not stir till it came time for meals. But that 
mood could not last. As soon as you had made 
good your over-drafts on the bank of nature, your 
pent-up energies began to clamor for vent. There 
were fishes to catch in the brook, or game to shoot 
in the forest, or picnics and walks and rides with 
pleasant company. Your resting soon took the 
shape of working hard. 

And the demands of social life stimulate this 
constitutional impulse toward activity. Competi- 
tion in business and in the effort to achieve social 
position is intense. I am told that nowhere in 



FAITH THAT BUILDS CHARACTER 109 

the world do men in the leadership of manu- 
factures, of finance, of transportation and of trade 
set themselves to downright hard work as do ours 
in America. Success is flotsam that must be res- 
cued at once. What the sea of fortune tosses 
within reach must be seized before the receding 
billow sweeps it back into the deep. And so 
because all life is action, and because here in 
America life is so intense, we will find character 
developing in action. The hours are certain to be 
employed. Strength will be put forth in some 
direction, either for good or for evil ; for the profit- 
able or for the indifferent or the mischievous. 
When the purpose is settled for the good and noble 
there is of course the heartiest satisfaction. 
Judge Prescott, father of the historian, once said 
to George Tichnor, "Take care always to say the 
same thing ; always have ten years' work laid out 
before you if you wish to be happy." 

Another consideration to be noticed along with 
this is, that every life is building according to 
some definite plan. Even when the clear purpose 
is not apparent, there will be the drift toward a 
fixed plan. You have seen those dissected maps, 
the toys of childhood, a mere heap of disjecta 
membra, scattered fragments; but there was 
order in the disorder, a definite place somewhere 
for every piece. Do you know that every pane of 
glass has a musical tone? Clamp a pane of glass 
at its middle point ; sprinkle dry sand on its upper 
side, draw a violin bow firmly across the edge and 
a clear note will strike the ear. That sand will be 
tossed up in symmetrical waves, and the lines of 
the pattern so made will be characteristic of that 



110 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

particular tone. So every life has a plan, a 
supreme purpose, a guiding impulse. With Saul, 
that first king of Israel, that man who vacillated 
between loyalty to God and disobedience, there 
was a ruling plan, the plan of stubborn and obdu- 
rate self-will, which could put itself into direct 
contravention of the command of the Most High. 
The life of Ahab, the bad king, that troubler of 
Israel, that persecutor of Elijah, followed a plan, 
the plan of cringing and servile submission to a 
base-hearted woman. Judas Iscariot, who was 
now with the disciples, and now with the priests 
and elders bargaining for the betrayal of his Mas- 
ter, had a plan of life, the plan of satisfying his 
envy and his greed. Paul, the great apostle, the 
truest man of his age, was building on the plan of 
whole-hearted consecration to his Lord. He was 
the bond-slave of Jesus Christ. 

The main thing in the building of character is 
securing the right plan. As has been seen, there 
will certainly be activity of some kind. These 
energies of ours must be employed, if not for 
Christ, then they will be for some other. If they 
are not occupied in the duties of devotion, they will 
flow out in the gaieties of worldly occupations and 
diversions. If they are not engaged in the Sab- 
bath School, they will be manifested in social 
visitations and recreations. If they are not con- 
cerned with the exercises of religion, they will be 
heard from in the club, the pool-room, or on the 
street corner where the loafers congregate. 

Building for God then is not so much increase of 
exertion as it is a better application of energy, a 



FAITH THAT BUILDS CHARACTER 111 

turning of energy into the right channels. Goethe, 
the German poet, gives exquisite expression to the 
thought : 

Rest is not quitting 

The busy career; 
Rest is the fitting 

Of self to its sphere. 

'Tis the brook's motion, 

Clear without strife, 
Fleeing to ocean 

After its life. 

Tis loving and serving 

The Highest and Best; 
'Tis onward unswerving ! 

And this is true rest. 

But our attention is to turn toward the 
upgrowth of consecrated activities, toward the 
building on God's foundation a structure of Chris- 
tian life, of Christian character, of Christian 
faith. 

In this connection it would seem hardly needful 
to insist, since this work employs individual ener- 
gies, and proceeds under the impulse of individual 
thought, that it should present wide differences in 
different persons, and that such differences 
between persons who have had various kinds of 
training, and who show varying constitutional 
traits, should be recognized as perfectly legiti- 
mate. And yet, strange to say, this principle is for 
the most part practically ignored. We have great 
denominations of Christians that are using all the 
force of their denominational machinery in the 
effort to make the Christians for whom they are 



112 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

responsible think along certain grooves, and to be 
exemplifications of a standardized pattern in judg- 
ment and conduct. In a village there may be two 
congregations of Christians, and each sets up its 
own norm for Christian training, and each strives 
to have the members of its flock duplications of 
that norm, and as much like each other as the 
peas in a pod. But is it the divine intention to 
have all Christians standardized after this fash- 
ion, like the parts of a watch, or a motor? Differ- 
ences in the dispositions of men, differences in 
their manner of looking at great questions, differ- 
ences in their view of what constitutes Christian 
behavior, are irradicable. They inhere in our 
entire make-up, intellectual and moral. Indeed, 
such divergencies seem to exist in man's very con- 
stitution, and to be inherent in every part of his 
being. 

Now the suggestion of building as employed in 
the text is replete with the idea of divergence in 
product. Any architect who has been trained well 
in his art will advise you that circumstances and 
materials will govern in working out the proper 
type of any edifice. Given the marble quarries of 
Italy, the extensive clay beds of Philadelphia, or 
the wide reaching forests of a frontier settlement, 
and you naturally look for variations ; for marble 
palaces in Rome, for houses and palaces of brick in 
Philadelphia, and for log huts and frame houses 
on the frontier. And variations of climate also 
will affect the problem. In Russia, where the 
mercury of the thermometer has a way of drop- 
ping down to the bulb in winter, the houses must 
have solid walls and double windows, and great 



FAITH THAT BUILDS CHARACTER 113 

ovens of porcelain built into the home as a part 
of the construction by way of heating the place. 
But down in Georgia and the Carolinas the house 
is spread out on the main floor, the windows are 
wide and they open like doors on the wide ver- 
andas, for there the people need protection from 
the heat. They must have shade and open breezes. 
Now men are constituted differently and are 
subject to very different influences. One man is 
emotional. He wants his religion red hot. He 
likes to shout "Amen!" and "Hallelujah !" and 
enjoys that kind of religious service the best which 
will sweep him toward such joyful exclamations. 
Another is more phlegmatic. He says "Amen!" 
just as profoundly as the other, but it is kept way 
down in the depths of his heart. Or he may say it 
by help of a substantial offering in the contribu- 
tion box. Both these types are individual. The 
men develop according to their various tempera- 
ments and conditions. Each is a distinct being. 
His soul, if the idea may be so expressed, has feat- 
ures as well as his body. Made as he is in the 
image of God he should be original and creative to 
the full extent of his powers. He cannot be other 
than himself without self -stultification. Find an 
illustration here from the pulpit. Offer to two 
preachers the same text, and they can never 
preach you the same sermon from it, unless the 
one pilfered the other's sermon, or unless both 
happened to pilfer the same sermon from some- 
body else. Each man must build according to his 
own individuality, and the development of indi- 
viduality produces variation. 



114 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

We have this idea as a direct inference from the 
text. But the apostle in the twelfth chapter of 
this same letter discusses the matter more at 
length. There he speaks of "diversities of gifts," 
of "differences of administrations" and "diversi- 
ties of operations," of "diversities of gifts, but the 
same spirit," of "differences of administrations, 
but the same Lord," of "diversities of operations, 
but the same God, which worketh all and in all." 

All these diversities of temperament and dispo- 
sition, and all these various aptitudes are essential 
to the general welfare. In the mill we cannot have 
all as treasurers, or all carders, or all spinners, or 
all weavers, but each one is wanted in his own 
place, and to be a contributor to the general result. 

It is much the same way with character and 
duty in the church. One man has a gift in prayer. 
It is a good thing: let him pray. Another has a 
gift of exhortation, and that is a good thing: let 
him exhort. Another has financial ability and 
foresight. He can estimate incomes and outgoes, 
and steer the bark of religious enterprises away 
from the reefs of financial wreckage. He is the 
man who should be elected on the board of trus- 
tees, where he may exercise his talents for the 
benefit of the church. Another can sing most 
sweetly the psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, 
and for him the place is the choir loft. And so in 
the well-managed church there is a gift for every 
place and a place for every gift. It was of some- 
thing like this that Paul was thinking when he 
wrote, "God hath set some in the church, first 
apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, 
after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps in 



FAITH THAT BUILDS CHARACTER 115 

governments, diversities of tongues." (1 Cor. 
12:28.) 

If we were all able to realize this principle of 
diversity in ability and service, I am convinced 
that all our church work could be carried forward 
with far less friction, and with greatly increased 
satisfaction. It is not for brother to complain of 
his brother, or to condemn his brother. 

"Who made the heart, 'tis He alone, 
Decidedly can try us. 
He knows each chord, its various tone; 
Each spring, its various bias." — Byron. 

Let each then build in the line of his best capac- 
ity. Let him lay his richest gifts on the altar of 
consecration. Then shall Christian love yield her 
sweetest perfumes and Zion rejoice in the fruition 
of her dearest hopes. 

But while one is building on the foundation o± 
Christ, and is employing the spirit of charity 
toward others in all that he attempts, it is implied 
that he shall be really building. The last clause of 
the text, "Let every man take heed how he build- 
eth thereupon," is full of significance. It means 
that there shall be construction, not destruction; 
erection, not demolition. The foundation that is 
already laid is to be accepted. Much in the mercy 
of God has been settled and well settled. When I 
glance at the world record and follow the strug- 
gles of earnest and thoughtful men in their ardent 
search for truth ; a Socrates, a Gautama Buddha, 
a Confucius; men begirt with superstitions, en- 
veloped in darkness and groping for the light, I 
can thank God devoutly for our more favorable 



116 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

situation; that we are not required to trace out 
truth from the beginning, that God has vouchsafed 
to us a priceless revelation. I have no sympathy 
with the efforts sometimes made to overhaul the 
structure of religious truth and tear up the foun- 
dations from the bed-rock on which it rests. That 
process does not find acceptance in your schools 
and colleges. When your son takes up the subject 
of language he is not required to make himself a 
grammar. He takes the text book which is pro- 
vided. That process does not work in trade. If a 
debtor settles an account by presenting a number 
of gold coins we do not raise a complaint and insist 
that he give us the value of the account in quartz 
ore. When we buy a rich vase we prefer it that 
way, finished and complete with its decorations 
and glazing, and we never ask the seller to give us 
in place of it ten cubic feet of the finest kaolin 
deposit to be found in America. 

No. The treasures of the past are useful to us. 
We cannot escape our indebtedness to our fathers. 
This community is an inheritance of civilization. 
Some one cut away the forest. Some one cleared 
up the rocks. Some one surveyed and graded the 
streets. Some one has erected the houses of the 
citizens and the business plants and the schools 
and the churches, and we enter into the use and 
profit of it all. 

And so we are heirs to religious truth. What 
God has revealed to us plainly in the Bible it is 
wise for us to receive with thankful hearts. As 
to what is not in the Bible; as to what men are 
inclined to write into the book, that is another 
affair; but as to the revealed word of God there 



FAITH THAT BUILDS CHARACTER 117 

is a world of common sense in that counsel given 
in the book of Hebrews, "Wherefore letting alone 
the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go 
on unto perfection; not laying again the founda- 
tion of repentance from dead works, and of faith 
toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, and of 
laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the 
dead, and of eternal judgment." (Heb. 6: 1, 2.) 
Starting thus with the grand foundation of 
revealed truths, Christian character should rise in 
general harmony with the foundation. When 
Ward the sculptor was preparing his colossal 
statue of Washington, which stands before the 
sub-treasury in New York, on the spot where the 
Father of his country took his inaugural oath as 
President, Mr. Ward occupied two years in careful 
study. One of his principal problems was to har- 
monize his proposed statue with the pedestal and 
with its surroundings. Should he make the figure 
eight feet tall, or ten, or twenty? How was it to 
pose? What should be the position of the head, 
and what the place of the hands? The edifice 
must not shame the statue: the statue must not 
shame the edifice. In all there must be congruity, 
unity, harmony. It is like that with Christian 
character. While we grant room and wide room 
for differences in detail, we must insist that the 
general growth of character shall harmonize with 
the faith, and that the man must conform his 
development with the general system of Chris- 
tianity. It never disturbs me when I find in any 
congregation some people who are so good that 
their friends mistake them for members of the 
church. There is good hope in that circumstance. 



118 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

The recognition of duty may presently cause the 
consummation of the fact. But I will confess that 
where my spirit suffers bitter humiliation is in the 
occasional condition, when you can live in the 
same house with some member of the church for 
a month and in all that time have no grounds for 
suspecting him of being a Christian. The Lord 
help us to build better than that ! 

Viewed in this aspect we may conclude of right 
character building that it shall be definitely relig- 
ious. Religion owes it to itself that it shall be 
religious. Would you regard that expression as in 
the nature of a platitude. 

But religion has not always tried to be religious, 
or if it has made the attempt, it has sometimes 
been woefully unsuccessful. In some quarters 
religion is less religious than dogmatic, less a life 
than a theory about life, less a concern of charac- 
ter than of creed. 

Or sometimes religion has been less religious 
than a mere form of religion. This was the mat- 
ter with Judaism, that it was a cultus of rites, of 
modes, of observances, of ceremonies, all of which 
dealt with the life of the outward man, while his 
heart was left inert and barren. 

Of course there are seeming advantages in the 
sort of religion that is simply dogmatic, or ritual- 
istic. These offer convenient standards, all ready 
made, for measuring the limit of brotherly fellow- 
ship. Here is a creed. All right. Subscribe your 
name. Here is a form. Observe it in the strict- 
ness of the letter. Do so and you are a brother, 
one of the goodly fellowship of the saints, even 



FAITH THAT BUILDS CHARACTER 119 

while you are breaking half of the command- 
ments ! 

The other plan which the text contemplates is 
vastly more troublesome. When you insist on 
religion being religious, instead of being merely 
dogmatic or formal, you broaden the scope of per- 
sonal exertion. You make many duties and you 
make them for every day in the year. And yet 
precisely that, a duty for every day, and every 
day a fresh duty, is the life of Christianity. The 
condition of building is constancy, persistence. 
The structure rises stone on stone, brick on brick. 
We are here in this church to worship God. Soon 
this congregation will separate. But even when 
the doors are locked, all the week long as you pass 
by you behold here a memorial of religion and of 
God. It is a church, evidently a church. No one 
mistakes it for a post-office or a hotel. On the face 
it is a Christian sanctuary. 

So should it be with the individual Christian. 
No one should ever be able to mistake him for any- 
thing else than a Christian. Paul was thinking 
of just that when he wrote to the Ephesians of 
how Christians grow up into Christ, telling of 
how "all the building, fitly framed together, grow- 
eth into a holy temple in the Lord." 

What faithfulness Christianity imparts to man- 
hood. Put the principles of the Gospel into a man 
and they make him the most faithful of servants, 
the most upright and honorable of merchants, the 
kindest of neighbors and the noblest of men. 

Were I set in command of an army I should 
want Christian men for the rank and file, and 
Christian men for my captains and colonels and 



120 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

generals, provided of course that my course was 
just. Cromwell's Roundheads, who sang psalms 
and said their prayers before the charge of battle, 
easily won the day over those drinking, dicing, and 
carousing cavaliers of King Charles. 

Havelock's Christian soldiers in that time of 
mutiny in India were often made the butt of ridi- 
cule by their companions in arms. But when the 
trial time came they were the men to be trusted. 
One night when an alarm had been sounded on an 
outpost, Sir Archie Campbell summoned a brigade 
to defend the camp. But the brigade he called for 
had been carousing and were totally unfit for the 
colors. When that report came to the commander, 
he said. "Call out Haveloek's saints, they are 
always sober and can be depended on." 

This then is the message of the hour, that we 
build on the Christian foundation; that we build 
on the foundation, and that we build in conformity 
with the moral and Christian constitution of the 
foundation. 

All that I so far have been saying has its partic- 
ular application to this college and to this gradu- 
ating class. This is a Christian college, and with 
all its zeal for the ripest scholarship and true 
moral culture, its noblest aim is to crown all by its 
inspiring Christian culture. In the ten years of 
its recent active work under President McRey- 
nolds it has graduated one hundred and forty- 
seven students, of whom thirty-five are Christian 
ministers or Christian missionaries, and seventy 
are Christian teachers, and holding honorable 
place in the colleges and schools as instructors of 
youth. It is a noble record, one not easily to be 



FAITH THAT BUILDS CHARACTER 121 

excelled, and outside of one or two institutions 
that might be named it is one that cannot gener- 
ally be approached. Of the other twenty-five per 
cent, of the alumni of the college nearly all are 
religious people, members of Christian churches 
and supporting the honor of the Master's name. 

It remains for this class, every one of whom is a 
Christian, to uphold that record, not for the 
record's sake surely, but for your own sake and 
for that of the Master. 

Uphold the Christian faith by your profession 
of its tenets, by your zealous championship when- 
ever the faith is assailed from any source, and by 
the consistent faithfulness of your Christian char- 
acter. Build on the foundation and keep on 
building, for there is no limit set under the build- 
ing regulations of the kingdom, for you may build 
from grace to grace, and from glory to glory. 



FAITH AND SCIENCE IN CONCORD 



VII. 
FAITH AND SCIENCE IN CONCORD 

Komans 1 : 20 — "For the invisible things of him from 
the creation of the world are clearly seen, being under- 
stood by the things that are made, even his eternal power 
and Godhead." 

HERE is plain intimation from the word of 
the apostle that the natural creation, in 
some measure at least, is explanatory of the 
spiritual world; that the course of nature as we 
behold it is a revealer to some degree of the 
omnipotence and glory of God. 

The passage from which the text is taken is part 
of the apostle's stern indictment of the high soci- 
ety of his day, and especially of that society as 
represented by imperial Rome. The aristocrats 
of Rome were infamously immoral, and their prac- 
tices were so corrupt as to be a shame to the name 
of man. His blistering catalogue of the abomina- 
tions current among the heathen of his day was so 
characteristic, so true to the life, that the mission- 
aries of our time recognize it as faithfully accu- 
rate according to what has befallen their own 
experience, and the heathen themselves have seen 
it also. When the New Testament was first circu- 
lated in China, the natives who read this first 
chapter of Romans could hardly be persuaded that 



Defiance College, Ohio, October 11, 1914. Elon 
College, N. C, January 10, 1915. 



126 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

it had not been composed as a direct attack upon 
themselves. 

Now Paul, who charged the heathen with these 
vices, was holding them responsible for their wick- 
edness. He accuses them for the first with 
changing the truth of God into a lie, and of wor- 
shiping and serving the creature, when all hom- 
age was due the Creator. What is the basis for 
such a charge? How could the heathen know of 
God as a Creator? He insists that they should 
have hearkened to the voice of nature ; that what 
may be known of God as manifested in nature was 
as clear to them as it was to others; that the 
eternal power and godhead, the invisible things 
of God, "are clearly seen, being understood by the 
things that are made. 9 ' In the natural world there 
was manifested so much of creative power and 
wisdom as to leave them without excuse. When he 
closes this argument against their excessive sins 
and idolatries the indictment is complete and 
leaves nothing more to be said. 

But if nature had a voice which might have 
impressed religious truth upon the heathen of the 
classic world, that same voice should be helpful to 
religion in this day and age. If nature was once a 
sister of the faith she should hold the same rela- 
tionship still. If, as the greatest poet of Germany 
expressed the thought, the visible universe is 

"The living visible garment of God," 

His glory should shine forth the more brilliantly 
as we come to understand natural phenomena and 
their processes more completely. But does this 
hold true on close examination? Does it actually 



FAITH AND SCIENCE IN CONCORD 127 

appear that progress in the understanding of 
natural law, a linking of fact with fact in the 
visible universe, tends to bring God and His reve- 
lation closer to the heart of the believer ? 

Some there are who will affirm out of hand that 
no such correspondence can be found. They are 
atheists and deny altogether that there is any such 
being as God. Straining at the point in order to 
be consistent in their unbelief, they repudiate the 
idea of creation, since to accept that would involve 
the idea of a Creator. In their pride of doubting 
they deny finding anywhere any trace of God, and 
close their eyes and ears to all the testimony about 
them which a sincere mind should eagerly wel- 
come. 

Others meet the statement with question. They 
are not atheists and would repel such a title with 
indignation. They simply take the position that 
in their searching they have not found God, and so 
that they do not know Him. It is almost with a 
tone of sadness that they confess their limitation 
of thought. They admit that nature indicates a 
correlation in its great forces and they recognize 
heat as a mode of motion, but as to God they do 
not know. They will not affirm that God is : they 
do not know. They will not affirm that He is not : 
their affirmation is that they do not know. 

There are others still, who perhaps are not so 
scientific, but seem to be actuated by a sportive 
inclination. They take delight in the expression 
of religious doubt, not so much I imagine because 
they are actually doubtful, but from the mischiev- 
ous impulse to worry and torment their friends 
who hold religious beliefs. So sometime when you 



128 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

have been in the depths of the forest on a summer 
afternoon and have stumbled on a quiet lakelet, 
lying in the calm of the declining sun, so placid, so 
motionless that its very quietude challenges your 
restlessness so that you have the inclination to 
hurl a rock, or a fragment of a stump, into the 
midst of it, not to harm anybody, but from sheer 
eagerness to hear the splash and see the swash 
of the waters. And so I can conceive how some 
active mind might be impelled to hurl a boulder in 
the shape of a hard question into the placid mill- 
pond of customary thought, not from unbelief at 
all, but from a pure reaction against monotony, 
and from a mischievous joy at hearing the splash 
and swash of startled conservatism. 

Then also, and this is what will concern us far 
more, we have friends who are anxiously seeking 
the truth and are in great perplexity over the 
problems which grow out of what we often call 
"the spirit of the age." They are members of 
Christian families, and may be Christians them- 
selves. From childhood they have been accus- 
tomed to the atmosphere of Christian beliefs, but 
now there are moments when they find it difficult 
to reconcile their feelings and their thoughts, their 
hearts and their heads. They have familiarized 
themselves with modern scientific literature, and 
some of the conclusions of science which they have 
adopted are disturbing to their views of the Bible 
and of Biblical religion. To their consternation 
they appear to be drifting into a current of pro- 
test against, and of declining sympathy with 
beliefs that they long have cherished. Though 
they fear, they think. They cannot help thinking. 



FAITH AND SCIENCE IN CONCORD 129 

And as they think they seem to be getting farther 
and farther from their religious faith. They 
dislike to confess it even to themselves, but what 
they understand of religion and of modern thought 
seems to set the one into antagonism with the 
other. 

Now if we accept the doctrine of the text that 
God is seen in nature ; that His eternal power and 
godhead are clearly seen, being understood by the 
things that are made, we can readily conclude that 
all these various doubts of God by the various 
sorts of unbelievers, and all the fears of good 
Christians that scientific thought may ultimately 
struggle with and drive out religious thought, are 
equally fallacious and baseless. If sometimes 
there has seemed to be discord between the voices 
of nature and religion, such a result could easily 
have arisen from misunderstanding on the one 
side or on the other, and possibly on both sides ; in 
which case the appropriate remedy would seem to 
be the right adjustment of religious thought for 
itself, and of scientific thought for itself. 

As to there being misapprehensions on the 
religious side, we have known of such to our sor- 
row. The Bible is continually represented as 
responsible for teachings and interpretations 
which have long since passed out from intelligent 
thought. It is possible in this matter that the 
clergy may have been somewhat remiss. When I 
say this I am not to be taken as bringing an accu- 
sation against the pulpit for any intentional short- 
comings, for taken as a body there is no class in 
the community which is more thoroughly conscien- 
tious and outspoken. But the pulpit has so many 



130 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

practical subjects to handle, and has to din into 
unwilling ears so many practical duties, subjects 
which seem to the ministry of grave importance, 
that some matters which they deem of minor 
importance, because they understand them for 
themselves so well, may get passed over. Then, 
too, the ministers while preaching will make free 
use of Biblical expressions and figures, which to 
them have a perfectly clear and sensible meaning, 
and they sometimes forget how many exploded 
notions the general public attach to the same 
figures, and so hold these exploded notions to be 
part and parcel of Bible teaching. 

In our early colonial period the Bible was made 
responsible for the delusion respecting witchcraft. 
In Boston and Salem, if some one nursed a grudge 
against some poor old soul who was about ready 
to drop into the grave, he had only to accuse her 
of a too great fondness for cats, and of riding by 
night on a broomstick, to set ministers and judges 
of the courts to quoting from the Bible to show 
that he should be drowned or burnt as a witch. It 
was a pitiable mishandling of Scripture, but now, 
thank heaven, of the far distant past. 

But erroneous interpretations of Scripture, 
which have been discarded by certain classes in 
the community, will still linger with other classes, 
to their serious detriment and perplexity. 

A familiar example of this kind of erroneous 
idea appears in that notion of a literal hell, burn- 
ing and fuming with fire and brimstone. Now 
those passages of the New Testament which 
employ this figure in reference to the future state 
of the wilfully impenitent are understood by the 



FAITH AND SCIENCE IN CONCORD 131 

clergy to be pictorial representations, and not the 
statement of a literal fact at all. Ministers who 
are trained in Biblical interpretation, when they 
think of the terrors of the afterworld, shudder at 
the possibilities of spiritual suffering that will 
await the stubbornly wicked; the possibility of 
estrangement from God, the agonies of unavailing 
remorse, the stings of conscience awakened when 
the hour of repentance has gone by, of the sorrow 
of a soul filled with consuming hatred, when it 
should be throbbing with love. Such spiritual 
retribution is far more dreadful to contemplate 
than any kind of physical pain that can be imag- 
ined. Because they do not think for themselves in 
terms of a literal hell, the clergy may sometimes 
forget that the people do not see with their eyes, 
and cannot be made to see, except by constant 
iteration and reiteration. Literalism in concept is 
the tendency of the untrained mind, and for this 
reason great care must be exercised in the expla- 
nation of the inner meaning of Scriptural 
imagery. 

Another crude notion respecting the Bible, and 
one which misleads many minds into thinking that 
there must be conflict between science and relig- 
ious thought, is that the Good Book teaches that 
the universe and the earth were created in six 
literal days of the length of twenty-four hours 
each. Here we touch once more the field of inter- 
pretation. It is literalism which springs to the 
hasty conclusion that the day of creation was 
twenty-four hours long. In the Genesis story 
there is not a hint of the "day" being limited to 
any set number of hours. In fact, those "days" 



132 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

were marked by a period of darkness, followed by 
a period of light, and how long each of these were 
there is no possibility of telling. I do not know of 
a respectable theological seminary anywhere 
which would venture to limit the creative "day" 
in the duration of its time. Indeed from the age 
of Augustine, that great preacher of the fifth cen- 
tury, it has been understood in the church that the 
"days" of Genesis were extended periods, days of 
God, and measured by unknown thousands of our 
years. 

But when the pulpit employs this broad inter- 
pretation respecting the creative days, we must 
understand that there are many people who do not 
comprehend the matter in this way, and because 
they read the Genesis story and think of the 
"days" as held to the strict twenty-four hour limit, 
they fall into great trouble of mind when they are 
confronted with any other view. 

And so I am persuaded that the ministry should 
give more definite instruction on these, and other 
topics that are kindred to them, so that the people 
may be better informed as to what the Bible does 
teach, and what it does not. When we are well rid 
of exploded interpretations of Scripture, which 
make the Word of God of none effect, we shall all 
breathe more freely, and have much greater com- 
fort in the joy of our faith. 

But while we are insisting that we acquire right 
views of Holy Scripture, we must also insist with 
equal fervor that we secure right views of science. 
Much runs current in scientific thought which an- 
other generation will not recognize by that name. 
True science contents itself with facts that are 



FAITH AND SCIENCE IN CONCORD 133 

established as such, and with the explanations 
which consort with the facts, and with all the 
facts. Clever conjecture is not science, even when 
it is indulged by scientific men. The moment that 
a biologist, or a chemist, ventures from the realm 
of inductive experimentation to that of conjecture, 
in that instant he becomes unscientific. There is 
no guess-work which is more untrustworthy, 
more apt to be wild and absurd, than the dream 
flights of men of science, when imagination be- 
guiles them from fact to indulgence in fancy. 

When we comprehend this principle and distin- 
guish the facts of science which are well estab- 
lished, from the guess-work of gentlemen, who in 
many departments are really scientific, and when 
we approach the teachings of the Bible, not those 
as conceived by novices or the superstitious, but 
rather those which are indorsed by men who 
understand the laws of interpretation and what 
the Bible actually teaches by its beautiful imagery, 
it will be found that the most of the seeming dis- 
crepancies between religion and scientific thought, 
which the unbelieving delight to harp upon, will 
have utterly vanished. 

The apprehension of conflict between Biblical 
thought and scientific thought is further relieved, 
when we consider that each has its own separate 
realm, and that in the nature of things there can 
be no real conflict between them. How will you 
break a beam of light with a club ? See that sun- 
beam streaming through a cranny in the wall, 
with the motes dancing there merrily in the sun- 
shine. You lift the club, you cleave the air, your 



134 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

stroke does not fail, but the sunshine is still there, 
and the motes are dancing just as gaily as before. 
The club and the sunbeam cannot antagonize each 
other. They exist apart from each other, and each 
is subject to laws that apply only in moderate 
degree to the other. 

It is even more so with true science and religion. 
Science deals with things that are seen: religion 
deals with thoughts and emotions. Science inves- 
tigates the material universe: religion concerns 
the immaterial soul. No discovery that is possible 
to man can obliterate the identity of human con- 
sciousness. I am the same "I" that I was ten 
years ago, or forty years ago. I can to-day recall 
experiences in the home when I was less than four 
years of age, and other experiences that happened 
in my school life from four and a half years 
onward, and those experiences stand out fresh and 
clear on the tablets of memory. That identity of 
consciousness, which all men of sane condition 
possess, completely confutes and deposes of the 
mechanical theory of life. Love, duty, memory, 
worship ; all the higher functions of spiritual be- 
ing, are in a sphere apart from that of mechanical 
force. And because this is true, there are many 
who are eminent in the scientific world who are 
sincere and devout believers in the Christian faith. 

But the special bearing of the text is to the 
effect that the material universe is to be a teacher 
of God ; that true science is to be the sister of true 
religion. And this is a sentiment which I can 
heartily indorse. For science is the unsparing foe 
of superstition and delusion, both of which are 
prejudicial to simple faith. We humans are woe- 



FAITH AND SCIENCE IN CONCORD 135 

fully prone to self-deception. We declaim vocifer- 
ously against fraud, and before the day is out we 
yield ourselves a prey to some current humbug. 
Society is a fertile field for the cultivation of every 
noxious weed of imposture. It would seem almost 
that the people prefer a lie to the truth, a quack to 
reputable physician, or the voice of a false prophet 
to the testimony of a veritable revelation from 
God. How many shrink and cower at thought of 
the spooks about a midnight graveyard, which 
have no existence, while they fail to follow the 
word of God, which does exist. How many esteem 
it a portent of calamity to overturn the salt, or to 
fracture the mirror, and who yet make no bones of 
cracking three or four of God's commandments. 
It is a notorious trait of superstition to discard 
faith on pretense of its incredibility, while it will 
easily accept all manner of fabrications which are 
doubtful on the face. Superstition will strain at 
a gnat of sense, while it greedily gulps down a 
camel of nonsense. In this mood it will read into 
the Bible its own notions, and read out of the 
Bible the essence of God's teachings. I have 
known such superstitious people who have appeal- 
ed to the Bible to support their claims of ghosts 
and spirits, but who would shut the book with a 
bang when it taught that Christ could rise from 
the dead. 

Science then renders us a great, an inestimable 
service, when it aids us in ridding the world of 
falsehood. Science is a standing police, with spe- 
cial warrant to slaughter delusions and shams for 
the mad dogs that they are. It is a beneficent 
work. Let the falsehoods perish ! If they lurk in 



136 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

the speculations of science, kill them and science 
will be all the more scientific. If the falsehoods 
lurk in my theology, let science chase them out. I 
want none of them. If I read errors into my Bible, 
still again let science search, arrest, smite, destroy. 
My Bible will be the better guide when it 
is the real revelation of God that speaks, and not 
some false and superstitious error which lies in 
wait to deceive the very elect. As science disposes 
of the errors that are harmful to the faith, as it 
rids the world of sham and humbug, it is doing a 
work for the Bible and for religion which man 
should applaud, and which God will bless. 

But Paul is insisting that nature discloses the 
eternal power of God. This is our own conviction. 
Our first intelligent view abroad, when our judg- 
ment has come to the exercise of its function, is a 
revelation of majesty in the heaven above and in 
the earth beneath. As we survey the strong based 
mountains, the swelling seas, the fruitful lands, 
and the shining stars, and inquire whence they 
came, the instant reply of the unbiased mind will 
be that they came from God. The mighty forces 
of the universe must flow from a Being mightier 
than they, from an Infinite Being, and that Infinite 
Being is God. Even the untutored mind will reach 
this conclusion and hold it firmly. In the wars of 
the Vendee in France an atheistical commander of 
the insurgent forces threatened the peasantry 
with the destruction of their church steeples, so 
that they would have nothing left to remind them 
of God and religion. "But," said one of these 
peasants, "you cannot help leaving us the stars." 
That man might have been untaught in the 



FAITH AND SCIENCE IN CONCORD 137 

schools, but the skies had taught him the power 
and glory of God. 

Will any teaching of real science diminish the 
weight of this testimony of the natural world to 
the divine power? On the contrary the more that 
science multiplies our estimate of the universe, the 
higher is its teaching of the power of God. That 
peasant with his unassisted eye might have 
counted some ten thousand of those gleaming wit- 
nesses of God in the heaven above him. But sci- 
ence gazing into the same heaven with her instru- 
ments of precision calls out of the abysses of space 
star blazing beyond star in an infinite outreach of 
creation, which has no end in sight. By as much 
as science extends our view of the limits of God's 
universe, by just so much it magnifies His author- 
ity and glory. 

The glittering stars 
By the deep ear of meditation heard, 
Still in their midnight watches sing of Him. 
He nods, a calm. The tempest blows His wrath. 
The thunder is His voice, and the red flash 
His speedy sword of justice. At His touch 
The mountains flame. He shakes the solid earth 
And rocks the nations. Nor in these alone, 
In every common instance God is seen. 

— James Thomson. 

But Paul is declaring also that the visible uni- 
verse sets forth the wisdom and goodness of God. 
Not only does it disclose His power, but His god- 
head also. Through nature, so says Paul, "His 
Godhead is clearly seen, being understood by the 
things that are made." By the term "godhead," 
Paul means more than deity, he means the power 



138 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

of goodness. He means that God's natural world 
is beneficent. In the natural world the first 
thought of God is power, but the next thought is 
love. This is a great and excelling truth. There 
is of course a still higher manifestation of the 
Divine love, that which is met in the Gospel in 
fairest lines, in the gift of His eternal Son, in the 
redemption song, and in Christ's leading many 
sons to glory. But even if love is written in lower 
form in the face of nature, it is still written there 
boldly. Read love in the supplies in store to meet 
every necessity of man, and frequently to afford 
him comfort and luxury. Read love in the cer- 
tainties of natural law. When your physician has 
found a remedy for a certain disease, he has rea- 
son to expect that under similar conditions with 
another patient that remedy will perform the like 
office again. And it is that way with natural law 
everywhere. When in any instance we discover 
the law, we are assured of how it will operate 
afterward. God has constructed an orderly uni- 
verse, and order produces harmony of action, and 
harmony of action is a manifestation of goodness 
in Him who so constructed His universe. Does 
man still meet difficulty and trial here and there? 
But these incidents detract nothing from the excel- 
lence of the general plan. It was a wise saying 
of Pascal, "Nature has perfections in order to 
show that she is the image of God : and defects in 
order to show that she is only His image." 

Can our studies in nature, as we continue their 
pursuit, ever disturb the evidence of plan, of har- 
mony, of goodness, of righteous order? Progress 
in investigation can only confirm and extend our 



FAITH AND SCIENCE IN CONCORD 139 

conception of the divine majesty and mercy. For 
this natural law, when the idea is sifted to the bot- 
tom, is after all nothing more than the mode of 
God's working. Law is inert of itself. All the 
laws of navigation never sailed a ship. There had 
to be wind to swell the sails, or steam to fill the 
boilers, and then a guiding hand at the helm. All 
these excellent laws of nature require behind them 
a Living Force, a directive Intelligence, a merciful 
Purpose, and when you come to that you are in the 
presence of Infinity, and of Infinite Love. 

And so we are to dismiss the idea, if ever we 
held it, that science is in conflict with faith, or 
faith with science. Some scientific theories may 
conflict with some religious theories, but that 
amounts to nothing in the long run. So some 
religious theories conflict with other religious the- 
ories, and some scientific notions combat other 
scientific notions. But as for the fundamental 
truths which are basic in both science and religion, 
they are at one with each other. All real knowl- 
edge combines with other knowledge for the eleva- 
tion of man. What we must insist upon is that 
having some knowledge shall not be made the 
pretext for conspicuous lack of other knowledge 
which is of more importance. Let no man 
plead when he is accused of not knowing 
the conformation of a continent that he is 
thoroughly familiar with the structure of a tad- 
pole. Let no man plead when he has neglected 
the culture of his soul before God that he is quite 
well up in organic chemistry, or in the manipula- 
tions oi the X-ray. Exigencies are to be faced in 
soul experience, when the soul will need all the 



140 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

support and comfort which an established faith in 
God can bestow. 

So let our college men and women study the 
earth and the stars all that they please, but let 
them not neglect to search for God and abide in 
His presence. Let the soul ascend to the highest 
peaks of the mountains of wisdom. Let it gather 
its contributions of knowledge from every source, 
in the serene confidence that wisdom shall supple- 
ment and explain wisdom, that each attainment 
of knowledge shall be a stepping-stone to higher 
knowledge, so that as we advance we shall arrive 
at larger trust, to holier sympathies, to more 
heavenly graces of character, growing more and 
more into the knowledge of God and the peace of 
Christ our Savior. 



THE FAITH IN SINCERITY 



VIII. 

THE FAITH IN SINCERITY 

Komans 13:7 — "Kender therefore to all their dues: 
tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; 
fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor. " 

HERE in the plainest of terms the apostle 
settles the relationship of Christians to the 
state. In the ardor of their first enthu- 
siasm, when they embraced the Gospel with all 
their hearts, some might have imagined that God's 
claim to the chief place was equivalent to His 
requiring the whole place, and that in consequence 
their allegiance to the Gospel would dissolve their 
allegiance to the civil magistrate. If they were 
loyal to the church they might cast off obligation 
to the state. If they attended divine worship they 
might neglect the civil assembly. If they contrib- 
uted freely for the support of the Gospel they 
might on that plea escape payment of the civil tax. 
If they honored Christ they might neglect Caesar. 
But Paul exposes the error of such a conclusion. 
For, as he puts it, the state is just as necessary 
as the church. Both are of God. "The powers 
that be, 9 ' so he declares, "are ordained of God" 
In other words, the state is God's expression of 
order in civil administration, as the church is His 
expression of order in spiritual administration. 
Proceeding in his argument, Paul also pleads the 



Elon College, N. C, February 22, 1914. 



144 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

obligation of conscience. There is wrath, the civil 
penalty; but more, there is conscience, the moral 
penalty. "Wherefore," so he argues, "ye must 
needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for 
conscience 9 sake" Right, justice, and personal 
honor are all involved. The citizen derives bene- 
fits from the state ; protection of life, protection of 
property, the enforcement of all the rights which 
he holds under the law. In return for these he 
is in honor bound to discharge every civil obliga- 
tion. Because he is a Christian he is not to be the 
worse citizen, but the better. Whatever the state 
can claim from him he is bound to satisfy, and so 
all the more because he is a Christian, and for 
conscience' sake. So he concludes, "Render there- 
fore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is 
due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; 
honor to whom honor" 

All this argument rests as you perceive on the 
basis of natural justice, which springs from the 
existence of God and His moral government. 
Such natural justice reaches every man, whether 
he has taken the position of a Christian, or 
whether he has not. The universal consciousness 
of civilized man recognizes the difference between 
right and wrong, and applauds the right and crit- 
icises the wrong. Taking men as we find them, 
and cutting out such cases as affect directly their 
individual interest, and they like to see fair play, 
and fair play is only another term for justice. In 
all the great business houses of the nation you 
will find a high standard of personal honor. It 
used to be said of an honorable tradesman that his 
word is as good as his bond, and there are as many 



THE FAITH IN SINCERITY 145 

such honorable business men to-day in proportion 
to the population as ever were known. We like 
to hear a man speak the truth ; we like to see him 
pay his just dues; we like to see him square, and 
upright, and faithful to every honest obligation. 
You remember how Adam Bede, in George Eliot's 
book, stands at his carpenter's bench, with his 
sleeves rolled up, and singing as he shoves his 
plane, 

Let all thy converse be sincere, 

Thy conscience as the noonday clear. 

That picture is a master stroke. As if through 
a window in his bosom we see the white soul of 
the man. He will do right by all men and harm to 
none. He will detest all shams and trickery. His 
outward life will be the reflex of his inward 
thought. As he stands at that bench he is the 
image of truth, of sincerity, of noble manhood. 

At the present I am interested in tracing the 
attitude of a young man, especially a college man, 
who has sincerity of disposition and who begins 
to think about religious subjects. What shall be 
the attitude of such a man in respect to the faith, 
if he be honest and sincere and inclined to render 
to all their dues ? Can such a man, even if he has 
not yet made a profession of religion, continue to 
ignore religion? Suppose him, if he is not yet a 
Christian, to be an admirer of Jesus, that pattern 
of the ages. Suppose him to be a regular attend- 
ant on Christian worship, but not as yet connected 
with the church in regular membership. What 
does such a man owe himself, and the church, and 



146 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

the cause, with which he is in modest, or silent, 
sympathy? 

First of all, taking the narrowest view of his 
obligations, I insist that sincerity and natural 
justice combined will require that his every 
expression in reference to religion shall be abso- 
lutely truthful. Manliness demands that. Manli- 
ness abhors deception of every kind and degree. Do 
you realize why that story of George Washington 
and his hatchet obtained such currency in the 
early days of this country? The humorists have 
made great sport of the incident and have set the 
younger generation to laughing at the mere sight 
of a hatchet. And yet in the story a great princi- 
ple was involved. George Washington had some 
faults, but he was a man. He could face kings on 
the throne, plotters in Congress, schemers in the 
army, and dare the midnight ice cakes of the Dela- 
ware, or the privations of the wilderness which 
swarmed with hostile savages. No man ever 
accused him of fear. Not a drop of coward blood 
defiled his veins. His countrymen, who hold him 
in lasting veneration, love to think of the boy who 
was overtaken in a fault and who dared face the 
consequences without attempting prevarication or 
deceit. The nobility of character in the boy which 
taught him to scorn a lie was prophecy of the 
noble character of the man. Falsehood, subter- 
fuge, subtlety, profession of a faith that is not, 
are all unworthy of honest manhood, and if any- 
where in the world a man should tell the truth and 
speak the honest sentiments of his soul it is when 
he places his hand on the altar of the living God. 
No forced service is wanted there. Those who 



THE FAITH IN SINCERITY 147 

worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in 
truth. No deceptions there ! Blessed be the God 
of truth, for His eye pierces every disguise. No 
use for the lip to utter prayers that do not come 
from the heart, for God sees the heart. The 
adoration which He will accept must be the willing 
offering of devoted love. The prayers which He 
answers shall be those of the penitent and contrite, 
who lift their cry to the heavens because they 
really have hope of answer. Because God is the 
God of truth we may be certain that He will 
require our religious expressions to be truthful, to 
be expressions of the honest convictions of the 
soul. Right here is the place for great plainness 
of speech. Religion is not a matter with which 
we can be playing fast and loose. Imagine some 
man who is not yet in the church and who is 
inclined to skeptical opinions to ask what God is 
likely to require of him. He rather likes to go to 
church. The aesthetic influences of the sanctuary 
affect him pleasantly. He enjoys the service of 
sacred song, when the congregation heartily joins 
the choir in chanting the praises of the Most High. 
And he likes the straightforward discussion of 
great themes which he hears from the pulpit, even 
when the conclusions drawn oppose his own. 
What is such a man to do ? Shall he profess that 
he has faith, when he has no faith ? Shall he pre- 
tend that he is a Christian, while he is still a 
pagan, or at best a nothing-arian ? Never ! The 
faith of a Christian has its firm foundation laid 
in fact. It must be an active, positive, living faith. 
Profession of faith and possession of faith must 
keep step together. To be sincere, profession 



148 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

must not advance one inch beyond the actual faith 
that is experienced. In the name of righteous- 
ness, and of the soul's honor, I would advise any 
man, if he does not care whether sin or the Gospel 
triumphs, not to pretend to care. If he does not 
believe that the Bible contains a Divine revelation, 
let him be honest about it, and not speak or act a 
falsehood. If he really disbelieves in God, if he 
is an atheist, let him not hoist false colors. God 
wants no false, no make-believe service from any 
man. 

Religious expression should be truthful also in 
its expression of natural feeling. It is in this 
matter of feeling, of religious emotion, that we 
discover no little difficulty. The spiritual progress 
of many persons who have really desired to 
acknowledge God has frequently been blocked by 
the problem of adapting their religious experience 
to that of others. But religious experience is not 
to be all on the same pattern, any more than the 
grass blades in the meadow; any more than the 
shape of the trees in the forest. As it develops 
religious life will show many phases. What is a 
flower ? We will not weary patience with a scien- 
tific definition; it will suffice to say that a flower 
is a blossom, and that it is a flower, whether it be 
a blossom of clover, or the head of a sunflower, or 
a rich red rose, or the modest violet. But there 
are not more varieties of blossoms, giving adorn- 
ment to garden and field, than there are varieties 
of Christians. 

One phase of the Christian life is mystical. The 
Guyons, and Fenelons, and Edward Irvings live 
near to God and have delight in His presence. 



THE FAITH IN SINCERITY 149 

They may devote much time to private meditation 
and self-examination, and they are very anxious 
as to their personal standing with God. 

Another phase of the Christian life is more 
active. It is that of the missionary ; of the Pauls, 
the Judsons, the Moodys, the Chapmans ; the men 
who burn with a resistless ardor to declare the 
Gospel and convert the world to the service of 
their Lord. 

Another phase of the Christian life is philan- 
thropic. It is anxious for souls, but it follows 
Christ in caring also for the physical needs of 
men. The Howards, the Fryes, the Florence 
Nightingales, the Clara Bartons, who go to the 
prisons and the hospitals, reforming abuses, nurs- 
ing the sick, and offering the hand of mercy and 
hope to the despairing, are doubtless engaged in 
their Master's work. 

But if there are different forms of Christian 
work, there are also different forms for giving 
expression to the Christian spirit. Some Chris- 
tians are intensely emotional. They are affected 
by circumstances and they show what they feel. 
When they are happy in their Savior they are very 
happy, and they manifest their feeling in emo- 
tional ways. 

Others have a more even temperament and are 
in consequence less demonstrative. Their habitual 
self-control forbids any precipitancy of action, 
and their natural caution protects them from any- 
thing that savors of extravagance of speech or 
thought. Such differences are natural and funda- 
mental. 



150 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

Because of such variations in temperament and 
training I no more expect all Christians to act 
alike, or even to enter the kingdom by the gate of 
the same experience, than for all the blossoms to 
come out in June, or than for all my friends to 
speak with the same tone of voice. 

And yet some good people are trying their best 
to cultivate a Christian experience according to a 
model set by some one else. Can that be wise? 
Does God require of us anything like that? 
Surely not. Each life has to be the product of its 
own individuality. Try as we may we cannot be 
other than ourselves. What God asks of us is that 
each one, according to his own nature, shall render 
the best he has to the Savior. If a man does this 
willingly, gladly, honestly, laying on the divine 
altar the offering of a consecrated heart and life, 
he has right to expect the divine approval. But 
there should be no forcing of nature, no mimicry 
of the life of others, no pretenses in the house of 
faith. 

It is somewhere about here that we touch the 
basis of the hypocricy of the Pharisees. The rab- 
bis had set up false standards of righteousness, 
standards which might have come naturally to a 
religious crank, but which were altogether unnat- 
ural to the average worshiper. But the rabbis 
measured the piety of all worshipers by these 
arbitrary standards. The life and the attendant 
observances which they required might be natural 
or not ; might be an honest expression of the soul, 
or not ; still all who wished to be counted as holy 
must conform to the standard. In this manner 
the religious life as exemplified by the ordinary 



THE FAITH IN SINCERITY 151 

Pharisee became a sheer pretense, a deception, an 
elaborate sham, a simulation which had no corre- 
sponding activity of the heart. And so it befell 
that the life of the Pharisees became false all 
through, so that the Lord accused them of being 
hypocrites, play-actors, for in all their religious 
worship they were acting a part. Their religion 
became a thing which they could assume or lay 
aside, as a man does with his Sunday coat. All the 
week long they could be cheating some poor widow 
or building up some elaborate scheme to defraud 
a neighbor, but when the Sabbath day came round 
they would put on their robes with the prescribed 
fringes, and bind their phylacteries on forearm 
and forehead, and pull a long face, and make long 
prayers to be seen and heard of men. And of 
what profit was all that? Of none whatever, so 
far as religion was concerned. And Christ ex- 
posed the hollowness of the sham and called them 
vipers and whited sepulchers. And to-day the 
Lord wants no pretenses in His kingdom. There 
is to be no pretense whatever in the name of relig- 
ion. Every such thing is counterfeit. It has a 
false ring. God asks no second-handed experi- 
ences from any soul. When He opens the door of 
grace to any one He does not ask that man to imi- 
tate the experience of a Peter, or of a Martin 
Luther, or of the saintliest saint that ever offered 
a prayer. He does not ask the penitent to simulate 
a single virtue. He does not ask him to profess a 
single emotion that he does not feel. What He 
asks is the man's life, his love in its natural out- 
flow, and to have these dedicated to the Savior 
in righteous obedience to the precepts of the Gos- 



152 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

pel. No one who honestly desires to be a Chris- 
tian but can give all that, and the instant he does 
so sincerely, he is a Christian. 

But religious expression, while it should be 
truthful in the consideration which we have been 
examining, should also be truthful in its complete- 
ness. And it is possibly the discussion of this 
aspect of the case which is after all the more 
important. For it is quite certain, if misrepre- 
sentation of religion is sometimes made in the pre- 
tense of having it, when one does not have it ; that 
there is far more misrepresentation in the repres- 
sion of religious feeling which actually exists. 

We are all well acquainted with good people who 
are so nearly Christians already that there seems 
to be no good reason why they should not be alto- 
gether so, and yet they resist their better inclina- 
tions, which would place them definitely on the 
side of religion. What I am now claiming for 
such is that in common honesty, in sincerity and 
in truth, provided the religious feeling exists, it 
should not be hidden under a bushel, but should be 
honestly acknowledged. Just as one should pay a 
just debt; as he should honor the civil magistrate; 
as he should show gratitude for a favor done him 
by a friend, so when God stirs his heart and gives 
him a fair hold on the faith of the Gospel, true 
manliness of character should urge the confession. 
For here is a gift, a royally precious gift. With- 
out faith as we travel this world we are but chil- 
dren of a passing day. We come up as a flower ; 
we are cut down ; we wither away. Lacking faith, 
what is there before us now or hereafter? What 
in such case is the future but a shadowy dream, 



THE FAITH IN SINCERITY 153 

scattered by the touch of sickness, dissipated by 
the icy finger of death ! 

But with faith, faith in God, faith in the Bible, 
faith in Jesus Christ, life comes to me as an eter- 
nal possession, and love becomes a heritage whose 
validity of title no shock of time, no crash of col- 
liding worlds can ever impair, and heaven opens 
before us with all its glorious perspectives, the 
final home of all our hopes and aspirations. Set 
my foot once on the bridge of faith, whose further 
end is close to the throne of Omnipotence, and I 
stand triumphant. What then is sorrow ? I mock 
at it! What is death? I defy it! What is the 
grave ? I trample it under foot ! Now, when God 
so sweeps away my darkness by teaching me to 
trust Him, common justice and the instinct of fair 
dealing bid me express the fact. 

That men, honorable men, are ever reticent on 
this religious question springs, so it appears to 
me, from the mistake of confusing the main issue 
with a subordinate issue. Too often men set aside 
the thought of their duty to express their alle- 
giance to God by busying themselves with the 
question of how much neglect and disobedience 
God will pardon. Possibly they are not stating it 
in just that way, but that is the practical outcome. 
If God were to send His angel into the world, and 
he were to draw a line as a limit to disobedience, 
it would be a very reckless soul that could imagine 
himself as defying God, and abusing His grace, 
and continuing right on in rank insubordination 
right up to the edge of that line ; and yet many are 
practically doing that very thing all the time. 
The man who lives in conscious disregard of his 



154 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

religious duty takes that stand because he believes 
himself still on the side of mercy, and that some- 
how or other God will pardon all his disloyalty 
and sin. 

But must we not see in this attitude a tinge of 
insincerity, and of misrepresentation by conceal- 
ment? And what is this but a species of hypoc- 
ricy? For be it remembered that there are two 
kinds of hypocrites, those who assume virtues 
without warrant, and the others who assume not 
to have virtues which they actually possess. 

I have known men who were braggarts of 
iniquity; overswollen gasbags of swaggering pre- 
varication. Such boast of affrays and debauch- 
eries till you might esteem them the basest of 
mankind, and yet possibly their worst affray was 
flinging a boot- jack at a howling cat on a back 
fence, when the cat was so far off that he couldn't 
scratch back; and their most riotous dissipation 
taking a glass of pink lemonade at an apple stand ! 
You might well call that the hypocrisy of vice ! It 
springs from the same motive as hypocricy of 
virtue; for the one hypocrite pretends that he is 
better than he is in order to secure the applause of 
men; while the other pretends that he is worse 
than he is for precisely the same reason. Which 
of the two is to be estimated as the worse ? It is 
difficult to discriminate between them. And yet 
you recall Hamlet's counsel to his mother, "As- 
sume a virtue if you have it not." Hamlet would 
say that if there is to be choice in insincerity, let 
it be of that stamp that leans toward the good. 
And when we push the matter to the end we find 
that the hypocrite who covers up his short- 



THE FAITH IN SINCERITY 155 

comings with the cloak of virtue, even if it be no 
more than a cloak, is unconsciously paying tribute 
to virtue. He has a preference. He chooses to 
stand well with the good, and that is better than 
wishing to stand well with the bad. 

But we were discussing the hypocrisy of bad- 
ness. What is there of nobility in that? What 
sincerity is there in pretending to lack faith, when 
we really possess something of the faith? Why 
pretend to doubt the Bible, when at heart we 
accept it? Why appear at odds with the church, 
when we really wish it prosperity and success? 
That attitude surely is something short of upright- 
ness. It savors of acting a part. It is hiding 
light that should be shining for the benefit of 
others. The more I ponder this matter the more 
I see in it the necessity for absolutely square- 
dealing. If a man believes in God, perfect honesty 
bids him serve God openly. If he hopes some 
day to be a Christian, let him confess it. If he is 
seeking the light, let him make the want known. 
Let him follow the words of Paul, "Render there- 
fore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is 
due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; 
honor to whom honor, 9 ' and I may add, worship 
to whom worship. 

And religious expression should be truthful in 
completeness for the sake of moral progress. We 
advance in our attainments in mathematical sci- 
ence by keeping up to the full limit of what we 
have been able to discover. Combining what we 
have already comprehended we reach out and on 
till we span chasms, and lay a mind measure on 
the curving seas, and fathom the depths of the 



156 PAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

star distances as they circle in the infinitude of 
space. But that instant in our mathematical stud- 
ies that any one of us ceases to employ his princi- 
ples, even if it be but one of the simplest of the 
axioms, we are at a standstill, and progress term- 
inates. 

It is the same in the realm of ethics and religion. 
Character growth demands that the soul shall 
make working use of the fundamental principles 
of the faith. It is by putting the prin- 
ciples of the Gospel into practice that 
Christians develop in goodness. Does some 
one reason that it is sufficient to believe 
down in the depths of his heart : but all the experi- 
ence of the ages proves that it is not enough. Test 
it a moment in business affairs. You believe in 
your heart that a certain investment is good, and 
that if you were to buy a hundred shares of that 
security, you would soon have good returns. The 
man who holds it is willing to sell and you wish to 
buy. But when you two meet, in place of asking if 
he will sell, and at what rate, you start in to talk 
of the weather, and the last elections, and of when 
the war is likely to end ; of everything else in fact 
but of that security. How soon will that course 
produce you a profit by help of that particular 
investment? But you do not make your trades in 
that manner ! Of course you do not. But that is 
the way that many people are treating the faith, 
and as a result they make no advancement, and 
their sympathy with the faith is so well concealed 
that it helps no one else, and gives them no encour- 
agement. Here lay the trouble with the poet 
Byron. It is a fact that is not generally known 



THE FAITH IN SINCERITY 157 

that Byron had longings time and again for the 
peace of the Christian. Yet it is on record that he 
wrote to a gentleman, whose wife had offered 
prayers for his conversion, and his letter stated 
in effect that skepticism was a necessity of his 
nature, and yet that he almost hoped that he 
might be like Maupertius and Henry Kirke White, 
who began in infidelity and ended in firm belief. 
But how came Maupertius and Kirke White to 
escape from the pit of infidelity? When they 
gained a truth, they made use of it, and truth 
joined with truth soon framed up a ladder by 
which they climbed to the security of a vital faith 
in the Redeemer. This was Byron's privilege, but 
he chose to follow the flowery path of guilty pleas- 
ure and did not care to acknowledge God. 

I am thinking what a change would presently 
come to all our congregations if absolute sincerity 
toward God were to become the general rule. In 
one of his beautiful hymns Bonar sings, 

Be what thou seemest, live thy creed, 
Hold up to earth the torch divine. 

I like the ring of that. The voice of true manhood 
is eloquent in that. 

Let the creed be the shortest possible, "I believe 
in God." Live up to that. Soon the man who 
believes in God, and lives out that belief, will 
believe in the Son of God, the Savior. But when 
one accepts the Son and reads the Bible, he will 
soon be believing in the Holy Ghost, in the Holy 
Church universal, in the resurrection of the dead, 
in the forgiveness of sins and in the life everlast- 
ing. A sincere faith in God as Creator and Father 



158 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

cannot halt at that point: it will develop. Not 
only does a noble faith become a man, but it adds 
new charm to manhood. It was my privilege sev- 
eral years ago to attend a meeting of the Brother- 
hood of Locomotive Engineers and hear an 
address by the man who was the first Chief of the 
Brotherhood, Mr. Arthur. I had long admired the 
steadiness of his course at the head of the Brother- 
hood, and the soundness of his judgment in crit- 
ical moments, when men of less balance were swept 
from their feet. Wherein lay the secret of his 
power, not with the men only, but also with the 
great railroads, which held him in high esteem? 
Was he unusually gifted ? . Had he a clearer 
vision than other men? If so it was not specially 
apparent. But when I heard him recommend the 
Bible to those men, and declare to them that 
the noblest type of a man was the true Christian, 
the source of his poise of thought and of his wisdom 
was solved. He was not ashamed to believe in 
God, nor to declare his faith before all men. That 
faith had become the joy of his life, and its 
strength also. 

And so I am urging upon all the absolute hon- 
esty of faith. Fear not to confess and live all that 
you believe. Render to all their dues: to God, 
worship ; to your neighbor, your influence, which 
may help him to a nobler hope ; and to yourself all 
the joy and promise of the Gospel, with its far- 
reaching perspectives, which open toward the 
blissful ages of the life eternal. 



FAITH OUTSHINING 



IX. 
FAITH OUTSHINING 

Matthew 5: 16 — "Let your light so shine before men, 
that they may see your good works, and glorify your 
Father which is in heaven." 

THE Gospel of Jesus is light and salvation; 
all this, and nothing less. You may distin- 
guish all imitation gospels by this token, 
that they deal in obscurities — the light is not in 
them — and that they lack the power of salvation 
in that they leave men still in their sins. They 
give high place to men who are steeped in sinful- 
ness. They do not enforce repentance. They offer 
promise to the reprobate, while he remains a 
reprobate. They peddle indulgences for the here- 
after for money, and indulgence for the present 
for social recognition. 

The true Gospel has no countenance for any- 
thing like that. Christ converses with the Phar- 
isee. Will He offer him a seat in His kingdom? 
Surely; but on what terms? Nothing less than 
that he learn to become a new man. He must 
cease to do evil and turn to doing well. He must 
abandon all his religious fictions and obey the 
truth. He must forsake all his cheatings and hard 
bargainings. He must subdue his pride and pur- 
ify all his relationships, both with his own soul, 
and with the soul of things outside himself. 



Defiance College, Ohio, October 11, 1914. 



162 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

And our Christ, who is no respecter of persons, 
puts all men on the same footing. His salvation 
saves men by making them worth saving. When 
a boy or a man becomes a real Christian you find 
him a different person. He has a new sight 
which enables him to see with the Lord's eyes. 
He has a new speech ; not cant, for that is detest- 
able, but a pure speech which is fit for the Master's 
presence. He has a new moral tone, and a new 
kind of judgment, both of duty to help righteous- 
ness forward, and to frown upon sinfulness of 
every kind and degree. By all these changes 
to-day, just as it did nineteen centuries ago, the 
world takes knowledge of a man that he has been 
with Jesus. 

Something of this general improvement in the 
man who has become a Christian appears in his 
new-found solicitude for the welfare of others. 
Once he isolated himself from all spiritual respon- 
sibility in respect to others, but his new walk with 
the Master quickly developed a new sense of obli- 
gation. You may believe that when the Lord cast 
the devil out of any poor soul He cast out the 
narrow selfish spirit too. And now when the devil 
of irreligion goes out, selfishness goes along for 
good company. Every real Christian convert 
whom you have ever known has been anxious to 
bring his friends to the Lord. Like Andrew, who 
found the Messiah and hurried to tell his brother, 
the Christian wishes all who are dear to him to 
share his joy in the Savior. 

I have said that the young Christian has a new 
sense of responsibility. The unregenerate man 
cares chiefly for himself. He views all lines of 



FAITH OUTSHINING 163 

action from the standpoint of how that may inure 
to his comfort, his pleasure, or his profit. Will 
some course that he is pursuing prove a snare to 
another? No matter for that: let the other look 
out for himself ! When he is told that his example 
is hurtful to some one he evades responsibility by 
saying with Cain, "Am I my brother's keeper ?" 

But when Christ comes to that man conscience 
wakens. The Christian knows that others are 
affected by all that he does, and that in a way he 
is the keeper of all his brothers, and so as his 
Master has taught he lets his light shine. 

Now this light, which the Lord uses as illustra- 
tion of that divine truth which the Christian has 
received, is one of the subtlest, and yet one of the 
mightiest forces of nature. It was the first child 
of creation. When formless matter was sleeping 
in the bosom of primeval chaos, God spake; and 
at the word light flashed into being. As Tennyson 
sings in the Memoriam, 

God and nature met in light. 

Three characteristics appear in light which ren- 
der it peculiarly representative of the truth of 
God. Light has power. We have come to the 
season when the Creator is renewing His annual 
miracle of the Springtide. 

Sweet sun gleams come and go 
Upon the hills, in lanes the wild flowers blow, 
And tender leaves are bursting everywhere. 

— Todhunter. 

Nature is rousing herself from her long repose. 
From every hillside and garden the verdure is 



164 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

leaping up in welcome. The whole earth throbs 
with the mystery of life. And what is the occa- 
sion? Merely the longer and brighter day, the 
more glowing sunshine. So the dull earth enjoys 
the cherishing warmth, and the gentle dews distil, 
and the torpid powers of dormant plants are 
stirred, and in a day whole trees burst forth in a 
splendor of blossoming. 

And the light is God's agent for purification. 
How man is eternally poisoning and destroying his 
atmosphere, polluting life at its fountain head. 
Ten thousand chimneys pour out reeking fumes of 
foul gases, laden with corruption and death. 
Every city, every dwelling-place of man is manu- 
facturing vitiation for earth and sky. Every pair 
of lungs that inhales pure air also exhales cor- 
rupted air, the source of disease. And so rapidly 
does this process continue that if God had not made 
provision to abate the evil, there would soon be no 
more living on this globe than in a close apartment 
with a charcoal fire. But God in His infinite 
mercy minimizes man's mischiefs. He sets His 
great sun as a sentinel to watch for and destroy 
impurities. He commissions the clear beams of 
the morning light to chase up poisons and pesti- 
lences, to disarm them of their deadly traits, and 
to lodge them close in grasses and roots and trees, 
and so to make them useful servants. 

And the light illuminates. Darkness no doubt 
has its uses. I cannot deny that, but representa- 
tively it calls up doubt and gloomy terrors. With 
its shadows and heavy outlines it conjures up all 
manner of haunting perils. Go down some unfre- 
quented road by night, and how you reason 



FAITH OUTSHINING 165 

with yourself to convince yourself that nothing ill 
can possibly happen. A child would not do so, but 
would honestly confess that it was afraid. You 
go because you must, and you are not afraid in the 
least. no ! And yet the least noise startles you, 
and here and there fantastic shapes disturb your 
fancy. Yonder is some grievous beast : you come 
to it, and it is nothing but a bush. Then, it may 
be a highwayman. You see him plainly bending 
over the knoll. Yes, he has a gun, for you see the 
glint of the light along the barrel. But you know 
that it cannot be a highwayman, and so you force 
yourself to go forward, and lo, it is nothing more 
than a stump with a smooth stick across it. But 
not only does night alter things that are innocent 
into suggestions of danger, but it also multiplies 
the sources of real danger. If there be a pitfall 
in the path, a broken plank on the bridge, a real 
wild beast in the thicket, or an actual robber lurk- 
ing behind the stump, the night covers the peril 
from sight and prevision. All this the day cor- 
rects. It restores the sense of security in the pres- 
ence of realties. It reveals all the danger that 
there is. It scatters all the terrors that are merely 
imaginary. It brings out the real proportions and 
relations of objects so that they seem as they are, 
and stand forth in the shape of undisguised 
reality. 

In all this the light is fairly illustrative of the 
divine truth, which though silent is mighty, which 
acts as the purifier of thought, and which needs 
only to rise to its full glory to scatter the doubts 
and mistakes of human hearts, and bring them to 
a clear view of their real relations to each other, 



166 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

and to God. And so we cease to wonder that the 
divine power in manifesting itself to the human 
consciousness is attended with light. God speaks 
to Moses, and we observe that it is from the flame 
of fire out of the midst of the bush. God leads His 
people in the desert, and the symbol of His pres- 
ence is the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by 
night. That He abode in the Sanctuary of His 
people was indicated by that mysterious Shekinah, 
that beam of light in the Holy of Holies, which fell 
upon the Ark of the Covenant and flooded it with 
glory. When the Temple was completed, the Lord 
gave token of His acceptance of the place, and of 
the sacrifice, by the fire which came down from 
heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the 
sacrifice. And so we come by the most natural 
association of ideas to link together the thought of 
light and religious influence. And because of this, 
John speaks of the Father, the Author of all relig- 
ion, saying, "God is light, and in Him is no dark- 
ness at all. And so the Messiah, the Desire of 
all nations, who brings life and immortality to 
light through the Gospel, is revealed to us as "the 
light that lighteth every man that cometh into the 
world." 

Accordingly it becomes very clear when our 
Lord bids us to let our light shine, that He is 
directing us to use to its best advantage whatever 
religious light and knowledge we possess. 

Further still, in the admonition, "Let your light 
shine" we may read implication that man is in 
stewardship of the light which he has; that he 
does not hold it in original possession, to do with 
it as may best please himself. Rather than this, 



FAITH OUTSHINING 167 

he is to turn it to the best uses, and afterward give 
full account of his dealing. 

Here enters consideration of no small moment 
as regards moral obligation. Settle it that a man 
has absolute ownership in anything, and you cre- 
ate one class of responsibility. A man owns his 
house in fee simple. Then he can do with it in 
general whatever he pleases. He can build on an 
addition, or he can tear the whole thing down. He 
can enlarge the window spaces, or he can board up 
the windows and live by artificial light. He can 
sell his house, or give it away for a nominal con- 
sideration. And he can do all this because it is his 
very own. But suppose another case: that his 
ownership is merely leasehold, or that he hires it 
by the month, or else that he is engaged by the 
owner to take care of it while the man to whom it 
belongs has gone away on a journey, and in each 
of these instances you have an altogether different 
kind of responsibility. Now the property must be 
protected. The tenant can do as he pleases only 
so far as he pleases to guard the interests of the 
owner. In due time he must turn over the prop- 
erty in good condition. And all the time that it is 
in his control he can make use of it only according 
to the general wishes of the real owner. 

The context suggests that something like this 
latter class of responsibility is concerned in our 
stewardship of the moral and religious truth 
which we possess. 

The light, as you may remark from the verses 
which precede the text, is that of the candle, a 
borrowed light. For you may make the very best 
candle or lamp in the world, and yet it can never 



168 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

light itself. You know that the ancient Romans, 
from want of our modern inventions, kept up their 
fires as a religious service. If the fire on any 
domestic hearth gave out, fresh fire could be had 
from the temple of Vesta, where the flame on the 
altar and on the lamps above the shrine was never 
suffered to die out from one year's end to another. 
I can well imagine that these eternal fires were 
kept going largely from necessity, and that had 
these same Romans been presented with a cargo 
of friction matches, and taught how to utilize 
them, that the Vestal virgins would have lost their 
occupation many centuries sooner. But even now 
as then, our domestic light is borrowed. We must 
bring flame to make flame. We strike the match 
to light the candle or the gas. And possibly this 
thought of the light as borrowed will have greater 
weight, when we reflect that all the material for 
creating it comes at second hand. What are our 
present sources of light? Briefly they are the coal 
deposits, or the fats and oils, whether of vegetable, 
or animal, or mineral origin. The charming glow 
of the electric film is no exception to the general 
rule, for here we have to depend on the consump- 
tion of coal, or upon the flow of great streams, for 
the production of our electric energy. But those 
waters of the great streams were carried up into 
the sky by the power of the sun, which smote the 
sea, and made vapor of the water which rose to 
the sky to distil in the rains that made the brooks 
and the rivers. And the great coal deposits, and 
the fats and oils are all the product of the sunlight. 
The tallow of the candle, before it was found in 
the beef creature, was in the sweet grasses of the 



FAITH OUTSHINING 169 

pasture and in the waving corn. The rock oils 
poured out from the coal beds, as well as the coal 
measures themselves, were deposited ages on ages 
back by the subtle force of the sun in action on 
living plants. And so these oils and coals appear 
to be the sunlight of prehistoric ages, which God 
has bottled up and presented to this age, and to 
the ages which are still to come. 

And accordingly the simile of the candle inti- 
mates that this light of ours, which we are to let 
shine, is not our own, but comes to us from with- 
out, and so we are to employ it under the direction 
of the higher Power which has given it to us in 
trust. 

Consider for a moment the sources of our moral 
and mental light, and observe how this obligation 
becomes more evident. As children of God we 
enjoy a high degree of intelligence, in which it is 
common for men to take a pardonable pride. But 
you may have observed with this attribute of 
mind, that ordinarily men feel, if there is anything 
in the world that is indisputably their very own, 
with which no one else can be permitted to inter- 
fere, which they can employ without let or hin- 
drance, it is their mind — themselves. To whom 
shall they give account for their mental processes, 
which are known only to themselves and to God? 
Even if they are given over to loose methods of 
reasoning, and to hasty judgments, what of that? 
Is not every man his own master? Must he not 
do his thinking for himself, and do it in his own 
fashion ? 

But after all there is a limit to the man's self- 
ownership. This mind of mine, with which I do 



170 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

my thinking; by which I perceive, by which I 
remember, by which I draw conclusions, is not a 
native possession, not an original acquisition, but 
a candle which has been lighted at the altar of 
God. It is a spark kindled into flame by the 
omnipotent word, which created the first beam of 
light, and which made Adam a living soul. 

I survey all these forms of animate creation 
that pass in review before us, and discover that in 
much the lower creatures have the advantage over 
us. No man can follow a trail in the forest or the 
desert with the certainty of his dog. No man can 
spring many times his length with the sprightli- 
ness of the cricket. No man can uproot the palm 
tree with the ease shown by the elephant. No 
man can swing himself along the upper branches 
of the tropical forest with the marmoset or the 
chimpanzee. 

But, and here lies the impassable gulf for all the 
lower forms of created life, man has mind, intelli- 
gence, soul, moral impulse. The animal, even the 
most capable of them all, does not share these high 
attributes. He has no part or lot in this matter. 
It is mind and soul that make man. But whence 
comes this wonderful gift? Whence but from 
God, who gives every good and perfect gift ; from 
God, who made man in His own likeness, and 
whom He calls His child ? 

But this mental and spiritual endowment of 
man, which comes by the gift of God, carries with 
it the power to conceive ideas, and to feel intui- 
tions, which speak with the voice of eternal right- 
eousness ; and the further power also to gain other 
truth, to collect stores of knowledge and correlate 



FAITH OUTSHINING 171 

them with other and advancing forms of truth. 
But from the fact that in winning all this advanc- 
ing knowledge he must toil much and often to the 
point of weariness, he is sometimes betrayed into 
imagining that what he gains in this manner is his 
own, and that he is himself the sole architect of 
his mental progress. Let the weary toil be grant- 
ed, the long preparation, the tedious tutelage with 
books and masters, the midnight hours spent in 
solving problems and classifying knowledge. 
There was deep burrowing into philosophy, and 
science, and the records of classic literature and 
art. And there was decided improvement of the 
man as he absorbed erudition at every pore, till 
he became a marvel of learning, a veritable walk- 
ing cyclopedia. 

But for all that shall he plume himself on hav- 
ing attained all this by himself alone ? But who 
opened the path for him to engage in these studi- 
ous pursuits? Who leveled the obstacles and 
removed them from his path? Who raised up 
friends to cheer and comfort him ? Who gave him 
the capacity to retain all these knowledges in his 
mind, and not to have them swept away, as the 
receding wave scours clean the sandy beach ? 

As I survey these matters, it seems to me that 
learning should cultivate modesty rather than 
pride, and that he who grasps in the greatest 
extent the knowledges of the world must recog- 
nize the good gifts of God, and his own dependence 
on what the Father is providing for him day by 
day. 

If this conclusion be sound in application to 
secular learning, how much more is to be so 



172 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

regarded when we approach the subject of the 
Gospel ? For here we have light, which if it come 
at all, must come from God. For there is a sense 
in which we cannot say that the Gospel can be 
acquired as we master the sciences. Algebra and 
chemistry and logic can be taught by the pro- 
fessor. Or the diligent student with the help of 
text-books and laboratory work can acquire them 
tediously by himself. But while you can work out 
the differential calculus at the blackboard, you 
must study religious science on your knees. Unless 
Christ discloses His Gospel to the soul the teacher 
will teach, and the preacher will preach in vain. 

For it is possible for a man to know all the 
history and all the facts of the New Testament, 
and not know the Gospel at all. He may have 
read all the lives of Christ, Andrews, and Geikie, 
and Farrar, and Edersheim, and Salter and the 
rest, and may have compared them diligently with 
the four evangelists, and while his head may be 
full of information, his heart may be barren of 
grace. There can be no doubt of this when we 
remember that there have been unfortunate 
preachers, who have taken up preaching as a 
trade, who have studied the art in the Divinity 
School, and have been let loose to preach, and have 
been preaching for years without having known 
the secret of the Lord, which is with them that 
fear Him. It is possible, strange as it may appear, 
for souls to have been converted under the preach- 
ing of preachers who have never been converted 
themselves. 

And this can be so, because the Gospel comes to 
the soul by revelation. This is the meaning of 



FAITH OUTSHINING 173 

Paul when he says, "For God, who commanded the 
light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our 
hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the 
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." To be 
seen in its beauty the Gospel must be illumined 
by the Spirit of God, which floods the simple his- 
tory with a blaze of heavenly glory. So Peter 
knew that Jesus was the Christ by the revelation 
of God. Others knew the main facts about Jesus, 
His birth, His miracles, His teaching, His gentle 
character, quite as well as Peter, but God opened 
Peter's soul to comprehend the relations of these 
facts with each other, and with the word of 
prophecy, and so Christ said to him, "Blessed art 
thou, Simon Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood hath 
not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is 
in heaven" 

And so continually that scene outside the Da- 
mascus gate is repeated. The blaze of the noon- 
day sun may be wanting ; the oriental garb may be 
wanting; the voice of the thunder may be want- 
ing; but for all that many a man who has been 
possessed of the Saul spirit, a persecutor, a 
mocker, profane and blasphemous, even though he 
has known the Gospel as history from his youth 
up, finds a light in his pathway. Christ comes 
to him, and he discovers that the Jesus whom he 
persecutes is the Lord of glory. And so he is born, 
not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, 
but of God. Blessed that transformation, which 
gives a man the divine life and the divine sympa- 
thies, and opens to him the joy and comfort of the 
faith. And when this delight comes to any man's 
soul through the gift of God, he is bound all the 



174 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

more not to conceal the light, but to let it shine 
forth for the good of his fellows. 

"Let your light so shine that men may see your 
good works" Here is exhortation to active 
endeavor for goodness. That religion of pure 
negations, the gist of which consists in the resolve 
not to harm one's neighbor, and not to violate the 
precepts of the moral law, is far below the level of 
Christ's word and example. The text of course is 
at odds with the pursuit merely of personal aims 
where the honor of the Master is involved. Often 
men heap up riches with small regard to the 
righteousness of their transactions. They cherish 
lofty ambitions without regard to the consequences 
which may result from their inordinate endeavors. 
The place from which the Lord uttered the lan- 
guage of the text offers apt illustration. Just 
below where Jesus was standing when He said, 
"Blessed are the peacemakers" and "Let your 
light shine" in that lovely plain of Jezreel, was 
fought one of the most sanguinary battles of his- 
tory. There Napoleon who had conquered Europe 
sought to tread in the footsteps of Alexander 
and bring all Asia to his feet. In this battle, with 
an inferior force, he cut to pieces a Turkish army 
that outnumbered him eight to one. What shall 
we say of this man, mighty warrior that he was ? 
He was a master of military strategy and a genius 
in the combinations of statecraft, but in it all he 
was devoured by the cravings of a restless ambi- 
tion, which pressed to its goal regardless of laws, 
of treaties, or of human rights. Men marvelled at 
the greatness of his acts, but the good works 
which manifest the righteous man they looked for 



FAITH OUTSHINING 175 

in vain. And so all Europe combined against him, 
and when the sun went down over the Battle of 
Waterloo, and nation after nation came to know 
that the star of this man of destiny had finally set, 
there went up from the great capitals thanks- 
givings to God, who had placed a bound to the 
cravings of a false ambition. No. God's purpose 
in bestowing the light of great talents, or of 
Gospel knowledge, is to benefit mankind. Wher- 
ever sin has foothold, wherever miseries still lin- 
ger, wherever souls sit in darkness, there God's 
children are to come and by the light of their 
influence and example they are to correct the 
abuses and to help in saving the world. 

In this active influence for righteousness Christ 
would have His servants hold up the light of their 
religious profession with determination. You 
may have seen that statue in the harbor of New 
York which offers welcome to the stranger who 
comes to us from over the seas. The pose of that 
bronze figure is admirable. Liberty holds up her 
gigantic electric torch as if in truth she were 
enlightening the nations. It is a lesson for disci- 
pleship. The true faith must not be hid. It is a 
blessing. Hold it up so that all may behold. If 
you love God never hide that blessed experience. 
Let your light shine ! 

And this light of grace should shine without 
intermission. Your sailors on the great deep 
expect that the lights that flash out from the head- 
lands all along the coast shall blaze three hundred 
and sixty-five nights in the year. It is the law of 
the land that at sunset every lighthouse shall send 
out its cheerful gleam, and the lamps must be so 



176 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

trimmed and tended that they shall burn till the 
break of dawn. There, too, is an example for the 
Christian. If on the coast, the extinguishing of 
one beacon might mislead a ship and cause wreck- 
age and loss of life, and so even the temporary 
lowering of the Christian's light may lead to the 
loss of souls. For it is a fact which we cannot 
escape that soul depends upon soul. Constancy is 
helped to be more constant by constancy. All 
Christian influence is based upon sincerity, and 
every Christian who turns his light low loses 
credit for sincerity, and his influence wanes corre- 
spondingly. 

And the Christian is expected to let his light 
shine in the church, and in the gatherings for 
social worship, and in all his life and labor. There 
are pleasant gatherings in the social world. Peo- 
ple whose perceptions are none too clear fre- 
quently speak carelessly of matters which they do 
not understand. Shall the Christian, when his 
faith is assailed sit in bashful silence? Never! 
Let him confess Christ in evil as well as in good 
report. Let your light shine ! 

There are pleasant parlors where gay friends 
congregate and where they engage in diversions 
which they hardly expect good Christians to assist 
them in; but they will accept such assistance 
nevertheless, even if in their hearts they are 
sneering all the time at that stripe of Christians. 
But is the Christian to sink his Christianity be- 
cause he is outside of his church? Shall he turn 
his light low because the world has a candle of its 
own? There is a more excellent way. Let him 
leave all questionable diversions to others. He 



FAITH OUTSHINING 177 

never knows how much more his faith is respected 
when men see it as a guide of life, and not as a 
mere makeshift. Let him let his light shine ! 

Some young Christian when on a journey has an 
invitation to a barroom. Some friend is there, or 
a fellow student, whom he may meet there by 
simply waiting. With little thought he enters the 
place. What harm can there be in that ? He takes 
no glass. He does not patronize the place. But 
all the same it is no place for a Christian. It is in 
such surroundings that all Christian ideals are 
assailed and shattered. It is the rendezvous for 
the inveterate enemies of truth and righteousness. 
It is the veritable vestibule of hell. No Christian 
can cross that threshold without turning his light 
down. Let him stand as a rock against the saloon 
and all its accessories. Let your light shine ! 

It is the Christian who is in dead earnest whose 
life tells on all that is about him. Some time back 
an infidel, widely known for the bitterness with 
which he had fought the faith, became a Christian. 
What wrought the change? "One argument," 
said he, "I could never meet, and that was the con- 
sistent life of my father." A man like that, whose 
good works led his wayward son to glorify God 
was blessed. Blessed the young Christian, or the 
older Christian, who walks daily in the light and 
lets his light shine. Some soul somewhere will see 
it and be the better for it, and the aggregate of 
good growing out of a life consecrated like that 
shall never be known till the ages of eternity wel- 
come us, and the books of God unfold to our won- 
dering vision. 



FAITH'S IMPULSE TO MERCY 



FAITH'S IMPULSE TO MERCY 

Luke 10: 33 — "But a certain Samaritan, as he jour- 
neyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, 
he had compassion on him." 

ON the sea when the tempest is lashing the 
waves in fury, the storm-tossed sailor 
thinks of the solid shore; the wayfarer 
struggling under the hot sun of the tropics, of the 
grateful shade, and the planter, toiling in the 
Springtide with plowing and planting, of the har- 
vest that is to repay him with its bountiful store. 
In any period of stress and trial as there drifts 
over the mind a remembrance of what may be, 
though it be the merest web spun from the loom 
of fancy, lighter than gossamer, yet from the 
thought there comes comfort and refreshment. 
And by the same token, when the world care 
grows heavy, and toil has become a treadmill, how 
cheering the respite of the Sabbath morning, and 
the solemn calm of the Sanctuary, with its chance 
to contemplate how things ought to be, which after 
all is but another name for the way that God 
wishes them. 

And this weekly turning from the cares that 
are toward the comforts that are to be is the more 
profitable, since beside the momentary satisfaction 



Defiance College, Ohio, at a union meeting in the 
Baptist church, February 21, 1915. 



182 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

to the spirit the thinking of these matters may 
bring about salutary change. There is much that 
cannot be measured by a theodolite and the sur- 
veyor's chain. Sometimes it is possible to extri- 
cate the unfortunate from a difficulty, as the 
Alpine guides lift the tourist up some rough place 
by help of a stout rope ; but again there are times 
when a word, a look, a memory, the unseen, impon- 
derable influence of spirit on spirit, may be of 
more use to a struggling soul than the heaviest 
cable ever twined. There was Bruce, whom all the 
schoolboys can tell of ; Bruce conquered, demoral- 
ized, hiding from his pursuers in a hay-loft, who 
saw the spider spinning its web, trying to reach 
the beam and failing, and yet trying again and 
again till it succeeded. From that sight the king 
gained more encouragement and real heart lift, 
than from all the wise words of his counselors. 

Bring to the soul some new vision of duty, some 
higher ideal for its striving, some purer aim for 
its daily effort, and you beget a fresh miracle. 
And so for the brief time that we are together 
what better can we do than to turn from all the 
problems that you have been troubled with, and 
from the cares that have kept you wakeful, and 
consider a good man in his accomplishment of a 
generous deed. 

Must our picture be a description of an actual 
occurrence ? What matters the reality, or the non- 
reality of the incident, so long as it be true in 
heart feelings? Must the artist in representing 
his landscape include every gnarled stump and 
unsightly object that makes blemish upon the land- 
scape? If his work be true in the main, a faithful 



FAITH'S IMPULSE TO MERCY 183 

reproduction of nature in her happiest mood, so 
natural that nature at her sprightliest and kind- 
liest might have wrought its counterpart, surely 
we will not quarrel with him for wreathing his 
ruin with the ivy that may not have happened to 
be there, or for suppressing from the foreground 
some hideous thing, the introduction of which 
would have marred the general effect. Similarly 
with this picture of the Good Samaritan, we make 
no question whether the Lord relates it as an 
actual happening, or whether He invents it as a 
parable ; whether it be fact or fiction. Altogether 
apart from that phase of the matter our story 
stands forth replete with interest and instruction. 
It is a drama of life which stirs our sluggish 
pulses and makes us hate and admire, stirring us 
with two emotions which we need to cultivate, for 
we are always the better for having a wholesome 
detestation for wickedness and a hearty admira- 
tion for the noble and the true. 

And our Lord who tells the story with small 
attention to rhetorical embellishment presents it 
in a manner which awakens our Keenest interest. 
He has a purpose, to compel that Jewish lawyer 
to perceive and confess that the honor of doing 
one's duty faithfully is worthier than the super- 
ficial honors of birth and position. As we analyze 
the incident we shall observe how Jesus arranges 
to effect this result. 

For the first, He touches the chord of sympathy, 
which we may believe no heart can be so hard or 
abandoned as to have completely lost. To rouse 
pur lawyer's sympathy he tells of a lonely road, 



184 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

a hill road, the common highway to Jericho, which 
lay some eighteen miles to the east from Jeru- 
salem. This road leading downward to the Jordan 
valley followed the winding gullies, and was faced 
with frequently recurring caves, which for gener- 
ations had been beset by thieves and cut-throats ; 
a road possibly often traversed by His hearer, who 
may have gone this way with quaking heart, and 
have praised God for His mercy when he reached 
home unharmed. On this dangerous route the 
Lord pictures a solitary traveler, urged to his 
venture possibly by pressing business that could 
not tarry for the protection of a regular caravan, 
or perchance spurred by the reckless audacity 
which plunges into peril regardless of conse- 
quences. But fool-hardiness brings its natural 
reward. The robbers take advantage of their 
opportunity. The lonely man suffers the surprise, 
the hand to hand conflict, the overthrow, the 
wounding and robbing; and when the cut-throats 
have completed their work of violence they leave 
him lying there in the road, bare, bleeding, dying. 

To this scene the Lord now introduces two other 
actors, against whose selfish inhumanity we are 
made to feel a hot aversion. First comes the holy 
priest, a man set apart to do God's will, and to be 
representative of God's honor and mercy. It is 
part of his business to assist the distressed, and 
as chance offers to alleviate the burden of human 
misery. In this affair his duty is plain. The law 
makes no exemption for clergy or laity when 
trouble lifts her piteous plea. Immediately the 
needy are to be succored, the unfortunate to be 



FAITH'S IMPULSE TO MERCY 185 

relieved. And the heart should go with the hand, 
for it adds materially to the value of the gift. So 
Lowell sings, 

He who gives a slender mite, 

And gives to that which is out of sight, 

That thread of the all-sustaining beauty, 

Which runs through all, and doth all unite; 

The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms; 

The heart outstretches its eager palms; 

For a God goes with it and makes it store 

To the soul that was starving in darkness before. 

But even if the heart were far away, with that 
man lying in the road, his life ebbing away, under 
the law it was the priest's duty to lift him and 
comfort him. Why, under Moses' law, whoever 
found a beast astray was to restore him to his 
owner; or if he were fallen into a pit, he was 
required to extricate him, though it might be on 
the Sabbath day. How much more then should 
this priest assist this man, a compatriot, a brother 
Jew and one of his own nation. Surely he will 
hear the man's moans. As a priest he will show 
mercy. He will do all that duty requires, and even 
more. But sad to say, the priest disappoints us. 
It is not always that priests and ministers are 
immaculate. He does not approach that prostrate 
form. Possibly he quiets his conscience by the 
plea of other and pressing duties. The service of 
the Temple may demand his speedy coming. So 
he does not stop to give the sufferer a draught of 
water. He passes by, leaving the victim of vio- 
lence to perish. And so far as he was concerned 
the man might have perished. If the occurrence 
were fact, and who can say that it was not ; if that 



186 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

priest in his coldness and hardness of heart 
actually went past, not caring whether the poor 
man lived or died, then in the judgment the case 
must rise against him, precisely as if the man had 
suffered to the uttermost. 

Another now approaches, a Levite, an official 
connected with the Temple service, though in a 
grade subordinate to that of the priest. Doubtless 
the Levite will succor the needy and helpless, for 
this was one of his specific duties. He cannot 
plead excuse on the ground of other obligations, 
because his was the more secular office : the care of 
the Temple, the oversight of the poor, the doing 
works of charity and mercy. As he approaches he 
comes nearer than the priest. Does his heart swell 
with heavenly pity? Does he prove himself a man 
of generous impulses? Does he lift that aching 
head? Does he stanch those dripping wounds? 
Not so. He too goes past. He has forgotten his 
office of compassion. Stony hearted Levite ! We 
are no better pleased with him than with the mis- 
erable pretense of a priest, whom we have already 
put under condemnation. 

So far in this narrative the Lord has stirred our 
lawyer's better nature to feel active sympathy for 
misfortune and to aversion for cold-blooded self- 
ishness. Now He goes on to elicit the sentiment of 
admiration. He describes the coming of another 
man on this lonely way, one who happens to be a 
Samaritan, a man of the race that the Jew hated, 
and with whom he would have no dealings; one 
whom he would commonly speak of as a dog, or a 
swine. What could a Jew expect of a Samaritan, 
especially in any matter in which another Jew was 



FAITH'S IMPULSE TO MERCY 187 

concerned ? He was not supposed to possess any of 
the kindlier feelings. And then, too, he had 
behind him generations of Jewish abuse and villi- 
fication, which he would naturally resent. This 
Samaritan will probably pass by, glad in his heart 
that one more Jew is suffering as he deserves. 

But what is this that we see? The Samaritan 
checks his beast; he dismounts; he washes away 
tenderly the grime and the stain ; he anoints every 
cut and bruise and binds them up; he lifts the 
sufferer to his saddle, and half carrying holds him 
there till he comes to a public house. Then as his 
business is urgent he leaves the sufferer with the 
landlord, after paying his board in advance, and 
he pledges himself if there are any extra expenses 
to meet the bill when he comes on his return. The 
Samaritan to our surprise has acquitted himself 
like a man. He is humane, generous, noble. 
Though a Samaritan, child of a race that Jeru- 
salem hates and despises, he has so won the good 
will of the lawyer, that when Jesus asks him, 
"Which of the three thinkest thou was neighbor 
to him that fell among the thieves?" he is con- 
strained to reply, "He that showed mercy upon 
him" You see that he could not quite brace him- 
self up to say, "The Samaritan/' The old Jewish 
prejudice that he had imbibed with his mother's 
milk was in the way of that. But what he said 
amounted to much the same. For when he said, 
"He that showed mercy" he was commending the 
Samaritan as better worthy of regard than the 
priest and the Levite. Though they were of 
his own people, he must have been thoroughly 
ashamed of them both. 



188 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

And the ages approve this judgment. Wherever 
this tale is told there is but one conclusion about 
it. Everywhere and always "He that showed 
mercy" is known and honored as the Good 
Samaritan. 

The answer made by the lawyer has a wide 
bearing. It carries with it a preparation for the 
Gospel, which always confronts and confounds the 
spirit of caste and prejudice. That was a lesson 
which the time of our Lord required. Never in 
the world was the pride of birthright assumed with 
haughtier carriage. Every Jew was a student of 
the genealogical tables and kept his pedigree with 
a sedulous care that no German princeling with 
his thirty-two quarterings of nobility ever 
exceeded. Be his condition what it might, though 
he were as poor as Lazarus, and as helpless as 
the paralytic whom it took four to carry into the 
presence of the Master, he was a stickler for the 
blue blood of Abraham and all the privileges which 
that descent conferred. To be one of the Chosen 
People, this was a prouder boast than to be heir of 
Croesus, or a son of the Caesar. And yet we note 
how this Jewish lawyer, who cherished this same 
pride of race, was brought to confess that a Samar- 
itan, whom every Jew despised, was a better and a 
truer man than either the priest or the Levite, 
with all their well-attested tables of unexception- 
able descent. 

The lesson has wide application. It signifies 
that in God's sight true manhood, nobility of char- 
acter and conduct, outweigh all incidental condi- 
tions and positions. It opposes all those artificial 
distinctions and barriers which the world has been 



FAITH'S IMPULSE TO MERCY 189 

creating in order to separate rank from rank and 
class from class. 

Society has long been setting up arbitrary 
standards of conduct for the apparent purpose of 
exalting the few and shutting out the many. It 
formulates new laws of social observance. It 
must talk with just such an intonation, now with 
a drawl, or a peculiar inflection, or a mispronun- 
ciation of certain words for which there is no 
authority anywhere save in its own temporary 
caprice. It must carry the body with such a strut, 
or such a bend, eat this sort of food with the fork, 
and that sort with a spoon, and the other sort with 
the fingers, and show this kind of jewelry this 
season and another kind next season. All this is 
of no concern to the people who are not in that 
particular set, except when as is so often the case 
a malicious spirit attends all these differentia- 
tions, and trains itself to despise honest folk who 
have something else to do beside chasing after the 
latest style of visiting card, and the rest of it. 

Or the worldly mind sets up a standard of social 
recognition that is based on wealth. Its criterion 
of judgment is the tax list, and the god it worships 
is the Indian that the government stamps and 
prints on its coins and bills. 

And with all this society builds up an idle class, 
whose pride is that of the sparrow which does not 
toil or spin, while common people have to get up 
early and sit up late to earn their living. It is a 
fortunate experience for any one to be free from 
the anxiety for the morrow. And such may be 
very noble, especially if they receive their bounty 
as good stewards of God, and employ it with rea- 



190 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

sonable sense of their obligation. But when good 
fortune is taken as one's rightful due, when it 
induces disdain of those who are less highly 
favored, when it causes a sneer in the voice when 
one talks of "the working class," then it is high 
time to look at these things as they appear to God. 
And the good God I am sure does not care for any 
of our petty distinctions. It is the man himself 
that God notices and not his clothes. The mean- 
est sneak in the town can wear fine clothes and in 
the latest fashion, if he can only get some foolish 
tailor to trust him. Nor does God care for a man's 
possessions, for poverty of cash goes often with 
opulence of soul. Nor does God respect a man 
because of his ancestry. For what is a noble 
ancestry after all but a reproach, unless the 
descendant keeps up to the standard of his 
fathers? What is it else than a burning 
shame when the last representative of a 
noble line has dwindled down into baseness or 
good-for-nothingness? Those weak and puny 
sprigs of noble houses, who have nothing in them- 
selves to recommend them, and yet are so prepos- 
terously proud of their pedigree, have been aptly 
compared to the turnip, the best part of which is 
under the ground. Durand was one of Napoleon's 
great marshals. He was a child of the people and 
rose from nothing to high rank by sheer force of 
his personal courage and power. One day he was 
in a company of officers, several of whom were 
boasting of their great ancestors, when he spoke 
up saying, "I am an ancestor myself," which was 
surely the greater distinction. It was in his own 
personal worth that the Good Samaritan achieves 



FAITH'S IMPULSE TO MERCY 191 

commendation. The priest and the Levite paid 
too much attention to incidentals. But the Samar- 
itan cultivated goodness of heart and was so 
square a man that he won the Lord's blessing. 

But there is another point of view from which 
all these adventitious circumstances are to be con- 
sidered. If a man is not worthy in himself of his 
family, or of his fortune, there is large chance of 
his advantages becoming stumbling-blocks to his 
feet and millstones about his neck. Many a poor 
fellow, who has too lofty a position, who has had 
a too gentle grade of birth, who has had too ample 
an income, and so has gone all wrong, might have 
amounted to something worth while had he been 
born to struggle and poverty and been compelled 
to make his own way. Advantages are of no avail 
unless they are made good use of. It was no harm 
to Ralph Waldo Emerson that he had behind him 
sixteen generations of Gospel ministers, of whom 
he was lineally descended. But he did not depend 
on his ancestry and made good for himself. And 
this is what all should be doing, for to depend on 
advantages merely is to throw away opportunity. 
The Scripture is overflowing with examples to 
prove the rule. There is the Hebrew race, which 
in the pride of its Law and Covenant, rejects 
Jesus. What a history that race enjoyed, and 
what a record of divine establishment and divine 
interventions. God had called Abraham, the 
Father of the faithful. He had led Israel out of 
bondage with a high and outstretched arm. He 
had given them a glorious land, and granted them 
a long and eventful series of mercies, which 
showed that He held them with peculiar favor. 



192 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

What might not a historical heritage like that 
have wrought for their race had they followed God 
with the trust that their fathers had shown? But 
they were content to depend on the achievements 
of their fathers. They trusted in Moses, but they 
would not put their trust in Jesus Christ. And so 
Christ threw open the door of His Kingdom to the 
Gentiles. 

The parable of the Pharisee and the Publican 
carries the like thought. As the two men come to 
the Temple the advantage seems to all with the 
Pharisee. He is respectable : the other is not. He 
has been religious: the other has not. He has 
kept the fasts : the other has not. The Publican 
is so conscious of his errors that he dares not lift 
his eyes as he enters the holy place. But the 
advantages of the Pharisee are his destruction; 
for he trusts to them, while the Publican trusts in 
God and is justified. 

The present lesson has the same ethical bearing. 
Here are the priest and the Levite, both of them 
engaged in the Temple worship ; both God's minis- 
ters, in comparison with whom the Samaritan 
must have seemed a very vulgar and worthless 
person. But so used had they grown to the atmos- 
phere of piety that they made it a careless 
formality. The nearer they seemed to God the 
farther they were away. Perhaps had they not 
had so much to make them good and true they 
might have been better and truer men. 

And so I am asking if there are any in this place 
who have enjoyed great opportunities for good- 
ness, and are lacking in that personal goodness 
which the Lord requires. Is there some one who 



FAITH'S IMPULSE TO MERCY 193 

has had a Christian father and mother, and has 
Christian brothers and sisters, who has been thus 
living in an atmosphere surcharged with Chris- 
tian goodness, and who in spite of all this is 
wanting in the personal religious life ? God wants 
each one's soul offering. No prayers of your pious 
father can be a substitute for yours. Think of 
this priest and this Levite, and let their case give 
warning against imagining that the warmth of 
the religious atmosphere in which you are privil- 
edged to live can in any way release from the obli- 
gation of personal faith in the Son of God. 

"When he saw him he had compassion on him" 
The mark of the Good Samaritan was his having 
compassion. This spirit of love and mercy is char- 
acteristic of Christianity and of true Christians. 
In various secret orders the membership is recog- 
nized as having undergone certain exercises of 
initiation. Similarly the growth into mercy is 
initiation into Christian living. We have ample 
opportunity for showing mercy. No need to 
travel across the seas, or to go down the hill road 
towards Jericho, to find cases that call for sym- 
pathy. There is a spirit that wants distance to 
lend enchantment to the view before it can listen 
to the voice of duty. It will send stew pans to the 
cannibals, but overlooks the weak and wounded 
lying at its door. It sets its eye on Terra del 
Fuego or the North Pole, but has no glance for 
the home-spun and commonplace sorrow. But the 
earnest Christian who says, "God bless the foreign 
field," is just as ready to say, "God bless the home 
field." He does not carry his head so high while 
listening for distant woes that he is deaf to the 



194 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

cry of the man who lies bleeding in the road before 
him. Yes indeed, pain, wounds, burdens, necessi- 
ties ; these are instant passports to the true man's 
heart. I suspect that both the priest and the 
Levite would have extended the helping hand to 
the sufferer if he had belonged to their set, or if 
he had been an attendant at their synagogue, or if 
he had been first cousin to their wife's half sister. 
But you notice that the distinction of our Good 
Samaritan is that he had compassion on the man, 
when his only credentials were his wounds and his 
pain. 

Have you considered that the Samaritan showed 
compassion by pouring in wine? The Scripture 
says that he poured in oil and wine. But we are 
not to jump to the hasty conclusion that this is to 
be taken as a back-handed blow at the temperance 
movement. It is not to be taken in that way at all. 
It makes all the difference in the world how one 
uses the wine. The Good Samaritan mixed his 
with oil, olive oil. I would care little how much in 
the way of intoxicants might be imported into the 
state if I were permitted to mix them to suit me. 
I would make the composition about half liquor 
and half oil, and to make the business satisfactory 
I would make the half part of oil to be good, cold- 
pressed castor-oil. That would make a very harm- 
less preparation. But there is quite a difference 
in the way one uses the wine and the rest of it. 
In the Savior's day good wine and good olive oil 
were beaten together, and were then employed as 
an unguent for wounds. The Good Samaritan 
poured his wine outside the man. It would be a 
good thing now to pour all the wine, and all the 



FAITH'S IMPULSE TO MERCY 195 

rum, and all the beer outside of men — the gutter 
would be a good place — and then the world would 
be happier, and the hand of violence would be 
lighter, and the outrage of sin would be less griev- 
ous, and a brighter day would dawn upon all our 
counsels and enterprises. 

But Christ's Samaritans remember that there 
are other wounds than those of sword and club 
and spear. The tongue is a sharp weapon, and it 
cuts keener than a razor, and deeper than a dag- 
ger. that men and women could realize the 
power and menace of the tongue. There are suf- 
ferers from the sin of slander, who have done 
nothing to be slandered for. There are penitent 
sinners, who have sinned and have paid the full 
penalty of their sinning, and are doing their best 
to win once more the confidence of their fellows. 
How are these to be dealt with? Some come like 
the priest and the Levite and carelessly pass by on 
the other side. But some do not pass by. Well 
would it be for the troubled soul if they would 
pass by. But no, they pause, they inspect, they 
probe, they agonize. The Samaritan soothed the 
victim of the robbers with oil and wine. These 
handle the wound. They tear away the bandages. 
They pour in seething, scathing oil of vitriol. 
Heaven restrain the people who are at their best 
when they are setting their neighbors by the ears, 
and who in place of healing the pains of the world 
aggravate and make them worse by their mali- 
cious gossip. But the Good Samaritan is a child of 
peace. He is the true neighbor who in every trial 
comes with the hand of compassion and in all his 
showing shows mercy. 



196 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

But our present lesson would be incomplete if 
we fail to observe the Good Samaritan. The good 
man was merciful, but where are such depths of 
mercy known or imagined as appear in the life 
and character of Jesus? All wounded with sin, 
what claim had man to the favor of heaven ? And 
yet Christ came to his relief. He makes no ques- 
tions about the past, about one's race, or family, 
or position, or wealth. All that Jesus asks is, Is 
this man in need ? 

And what love there was in the Savior's helping. 
The man took the sufferer to an inn : Christ lifts 
us in the arms of eternal mercy. 

The man paid two days' wages, the sufferer's 
board for two weeks, but Christ poured out His 
own precious blood. 

The man went away, but Jesus remains and 
watches beside us through the long night hours 
of sin's fitful fever, and through the long days of 
temptation and struggle. When once Christ takes 
a wounded heart to heal, He never leaves it, He 
never forsakes it, He never forgets it. Bless His 
holy name forever and forever. 

I have three very brief applications. 

1. Never expect too much of the world. Per- 
fection is blessed, but perfection means heaven, 
and heaven is yet a great way off. Never take it 
for granted that professors of religion or even 
ministers of the Gospel must be infallible. We 
hoped much from the priest and the Levite, but 
they disappointed our expectation. In the hour of 
need they went by on the other side. 

2. When trouble comes we are not to give way 
to despair, but should keep an open eye for coming 



FAITH'S IMPULSE TO MERCY 197 

comfort. That wounded man in the road had a 
hard time of it, and it must have seemed as if 
there were no use in trying to live when two men 
who should have extended help went past one after 
the other. how hard was that road, and how 
hot that blazing sun, and how those wounds 
racked and burned ! But all the while the Samar- 
itan was coming, was mounting his beast, was 
trotting along the road, three miles off, two miles, 
half a mile, and then there he was, lifting up, com- 
forting, saving. With the first blow that smites 
you, remember that God is raising up some mes- 
senger of relief. Trust Him and wait His time. 

3. Seek faith for yourself. Put no trust for 
your salvation in any position or circumstance in 
which you may be placed. Never lie back upon 
the earnestness of your church, upon the religious 
standing of the college, or upon the piety of your 
friends. Do not think that you are to be saved 
even by the faithful prayers of your loving 
mother. If you lean on these they may hinder you 
from having faith for yourself. You are right to 
rejoice in any privileges which God confers upon 
you, but they all should be made tributary to the 
strength of your personal faith. Taken in that 
manner they will not be traps for your feet, but 
blessings, ladders of grace by which you may 
mount to higher and more blissful ranges of spir- 
itual attainment. 



FAITH EVER DEVELOPING 



XL 

FAITH EVER DEVELOPING 

St. Matthew 9: 17 — "Neither do men put new wine 
into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine run- 
neth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine 
into new bottles, and both are preserved." 



M 



ATTHEW, a man of substance, has made a 
feast to which he invites his neighbors so 
they may meet the new teacher about whom 
so many are talking. While they are still at table, 
presumably arrayed in the best that they have, 
and in plain sight of wine-skins that have been 
drained generously for their benefit, Jesus begins 
to talk about new patches on old garments, and 
new wine in old wine-skins. So far as it concerned 
the clothes and the wine-skins that they were look- 
ing at, the expression was the simplest possible. 
The dullest mind could appreciate that mending 
an old coat with a fresh patch would result in 
having a vile pucker in the garment; and that 
storing new wine in an old wine-skin that was 
already stretched to the limit would simply invite 
disaster the instant that active fermentation 
began. 

But the Lord's suggestion did not halt at that 
point. Had the guests at that feast comprehended 
His language as we do, I suspect that they would 
have thrust their fingers in their ears and scuttled 



Defiance College, Ohio, June 6, 1915. 



202 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

home as if to escape the pestilence. That they 
kept right on eating and drinking while the Lord 
was pronouncing the doom of their religious faith 
shows that they saw only the surface of His mean- 
ing, and that the profoundly revolutionary signifi- 
cance of His utterance escaped them altogether. 

But why was Judaism become already a worn- 
out fabric, fit only for the dust-bin of forgetful- 
ness? Certainly the system possessed many 
elements which we must approve, and which were 
capable of inspiring the thoughtful with vener- 
ation. 

One of these was the patriotic spirit which it 
engendered. Wherever the Jew might wander, 
and in that Augustan age his foot was in every 
city, there was no spot so favored as to hinder 
him from longing with all his soul for the land of 
his fathers. The slopes of Mount Hermon, the 
plains of Sharon and Esdraelon, the waters of 
Tiberias and Jordan, and the steep ascent from 
the Great Sea to Jerusalem, were for him the fair- 
est of the whole earth. And the center of it all, 
the goal of pious pilgrimage, was Jerusalem, the 
Holy City. Here was the Temple, and the Holy 
Altar, which in his farthermost wanderings he 
never forgot, and to which he returned whenever 
his circumstances would permit. He recalled his 
national history, when Jerusalem was the City of 
the Great King. He thought of David, the war- 
rior; and of Solomon the Magnificent, and every 
fibre of his being yearned for the day when Mes- 
siah should come and recover His city and Temple 
from the defilement of the stranger. To him it 
was intolerable that his sacred places should be 



FAITH EVER DEVELOPING 203 

trodden under foot of the Gentile, and so never a 
day passed over his head that he failed to lift a 
prayer for the coming of the Deliverer and the 
restoration of the national name and power. 

And Judaism in its worship was beautiful. The 
Temple service was a stately ceremonial of song, 
and incense, and sacrifice. Its home was the great 
Temple on Zion, a structure renowned throughout 
the world for its extent and architectural grand- 
eur. Here a devoted priesthood led the prayers of 
the people according to a magnificent ritual, which 
in its richness and orderly movement swept the 
waiting soul along in a rapture of adoration. 

And then also it was a venerable worship. It 
carried with it the hallowed associations of histor- 
ical remembrance. After these ways the fathers 
had worshiped for generations. These same 
beautiful psalms had been chanted by the choirs 
of David, and the exiles in captivity had repeated 
their precious promises on bended knees and with 
streaming eyes. It is no wonder then that the 
Jew clung to his faith with such ardent affection. 
Age when it is right has ever a mellowness and 
a ripeness which gives it a delightful charm. An 
old man whose years have brought him experience 
and wisdom, and yet left his soul bright and 
cheery; who has won strength from his many 
struggles, and the good judgment that saves him 
from being worrisome and querulous ; who has the 
clear vision to see the good about him and the good 
sense to admit that it exists — how we venerate 
him! Such sweet peace looks out of his placid 
eyes, such calm dignity crowns his whitening hairs 
that we are all anxious to do him a service. 



204 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

And we feel something of the same respect for 
an old church; not the tumbledown barn which 
some communities consider good enough for God, 
but the church which was built long ago with lov- 
ing sacrifice, and that has been maintained in the 
like spirit, so that while time has robbed it of its 
newness and mellowed down the glare of color into 
a harmonious blending of pleasing tones, it has 
also filled it with holy recollections. The moment 
one steps inside a church like that irreverence 
hushes its voice to a whisper, and the devout bend 
before God in the rapture of worship. 

And something like that goes along with an 
ancient faith, when it represents the truth of 
God's care of His people and their dependence on 
Him. The passing years mantle it with dignity 
and sublimity. So nineteen centuries have crown- 
ed the faith that we love. Give me no new Gospel 
that was invented yesterday ; no brand-new cultus 
that has revelations made to order, as one gets a 
new coat from his tailor! The faith that brings 
us inexpressible peace is the faith once delivered 
unto the saints, that stayed a Paul in his trials, 
that comforted a Peter in his prison cell, and that 
age after age has proven itself the refuge and 
solace of the trustful Christian heart. Up to this 
hour, the convert, the mourner, the dying, say 
with common voice, 

Faith of our fathers, holy faith, 
We will be true to thee till death. 

Now when we think of our faith in such a 
manner it is not difficult for us to conceive how 
earnest souls in the time of Jesus, who were born 



FAITH EVER DEVELOPING 205 

under Judaism, who never knew any other wor- 
ship, must have felt toward the religion in which 
they placed all their trust. To them it was the 
very truth, and so far as they could know, it was 
all the truth. And accordingly we understand and 
commend the simple piety of Mary of Nazareth, 
and of her cousin Elizabeth ; the consecrated devo- 
tion of Zacharias, and the intensity of desire in the 
soul of Simeon for one sight of the Lord's 
anointed. 

But with all that might be said in favor of Juda- 
ism, we note that the Lord pronounced its con- 
demnation and that in effect He declares, however 
serviceable the old Law had been in the past, its 
doom had struck and it must give place to the 
coming Gospel. 

The reason for the displacement of Judaism lay 
in the fact that it had in the course of generations 
developed a set of cramping limitations. 

One of these was the emphasis it laid upon its 
local habitation. That woman of Samaria, with 
whom Jesus spoke by the well, struck this charac- 
teristic of the Jew when she said, "Our fathers 
worshiped in this mountain (Gerizim), and ye 
say that in Jerusalem men ought to worship." 
Judaism sought to bind the true faith to the Holy 
Land, a little strip of the earth hardly larger than 
the state of Massachusetts, and would limit salva- 
tion exclusively to the sons of Abraham. That 
notion of binding God's right worship to the mem- 
bers of a single race, while God is the Father of 
all men, in the mere statement moved its condem- 
nation. 



206 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

But Judaism was limited by its formalism. The 
purpose of a ritual is to make the expression of 
worship simple and easy, and so to aid the soul in 
its uplift toward God. When the multitude is 
praying it is easier for everybody to pray. The 
processional, the sacrifice, the swinging of censers 
tossing out clouds of incense, all tend to render 
worship more free and unrestrained. But Juda- 
ism had perverted this better use of worship, and 
had turned all these aids to devotion into rigid 
fetters of a cast-iron usage. Just such prayers 
and no other, and in just such postures! Larger 
phylacteries, and broader borders to the garments 
of worship! Such and such fasts, and just so 
often! In this manner the ritual of worship, in 
place of promoting the spiritual life, was crushing 
it out by its ever-increasing burden of needless 
requirements. 

And there was another limitation, which is 
closely related to ritualism, that of custom and 
tradition. The rabbis had invented a number of 
minor sins, with the worthy purpose of making 
real sin more difficult to commit, on the theory 
that the man who committed some of the minor 
sins, and so fell under moral and social condemna- 
tion, would still be a long way from committing 
any very offensive sin. Such was the philosophy 
of the "hedge about the law." But we have in mind 
the practical effect of this "hedge," and the fact is 
that the multiplication of these arbitrary prohibi- 
tions established by the rabbis ultimately consti- 
tuted a spiritual tyranny over all life, religious, 
social, secular, domestic, and personal. There was 
a set fashion respecting food, a set fashion for 



FAITH EVER DEVELOPING 207 

bathing, a set fashion of walking; for a common 
day, such a distance, and for a holy day, so much 
the less. And all these fashions were so much 
worse than anything that we know by that name, 
because the tyrant that was dominating all their 
affairs was religion, and because the man who 
would not submit to this kind of dictation was not 
merely an unfashionable person, a social boor ; but 
more, he was pronounced a sinner, and was thrust 
out from religious fellowship. And that was why 
Jesus uttered that stinging indictment of the 
Pharisees when he declared that they were making 
the law of God of none effect by their traditions. 

Still another limitation of Judaism, which was 
nullifying its better influences, grew out of its age 
and the tendency that goes with age to collect 
much that is vain and worthless. All life while it 
is developing gives chances for progress, but also 
gives equal chances for waste. In a way it may 
be said of living that it is constantly dying. In 
this human body, which is so fearfully and won- 
derfully made, along with the assimilation of food 
goes the making of new blood discs, those beau- 
tiful carriers of gases in the arteries and veins. 
All the time new blood discs are making, but with 
every throb of the heart thousands of the older 
ones are dying. Ride up and down the valleys of 
Pennsylvania, where they are making iron and 
steel, and about every blast furnace you will see 
mountains of waste material, the slag from the 
smelting furnaces, on which not even grass will 
grow. Travel past these by night and you will see 
an iron car laden with the molten stone, with 
flames playing all over its surface moving along 



208 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

to the dump, and the glaring lights will be fetch- 
ing out in Rembrandt effects the forms of the men 
who push it to the place where the waste is to be 
cast out to cumber the ground. In similar manner 
there has to be waste in moral forces and move- 
ments; an assimilation of new material, and a 
casting away of the outworn which the new 
replaces. Each generation has its own religious 
problems, and its own religious expressions and 
emphasis in meeting them. These it assumes like 
a useful garment, which after all that can be said 
is useful only while it is capable of meeting the 
present need. All these religious expressions and 
interpretations with the lapse of time, like the 
garment, will be getting woefully out at the elbow. 
And yet there are some who will never be able to 
comprehend this simple principle, and who when 
religious formulas and expressions have come to 
the end of their usefulness will cling to them with 
superstitious reverence. And Judaism was full 
of such antiquated notions and expressions, which 
the rabbis continued to hold, and which they 
exalted into a position of prime importance at the 
expense of sincerity of faith. It was no idle 
charge of Jesus when He accused them of tithing 
mint, anise, and cummin, the insignificant herbs 
of the kitchen garden, and of neglecting the 
weightier matters of the law, such as judgment, 
mercy, and truth. 

But the tale of the indictment is not yet com- 
plete, for there is the matter of selfish interest 
left to be reckoned with, a trait which is promi- 
nent in every age. For there were some to whom 
Judaism was a business affair, the source of their 



FAITH EVER DEVELOPING 209 

livelihood. There was the priest, and the rabbi, 
and the merchant who sold doves or neat cattle 
for the sacrifices, and the money changers who 
took commission for changing foreign coin into 
the Jewish half shekel of silver, which was the 
legal tender for the temple tax required of the 
worshiper; and all of these, priest, rabbi, mer- 
chant, and money-changer resisted with all his 
power any alteration from the old way, any 
change that would cut down his income from the 
dove selling, or the cattle selling, or the money- 
changing. It was just that way in Ephesus when 
Paul came and preached the Gospel. For 
Demetrius, who was a silversmith and made his 
living by making silver models of the temple of 
Diana, which he sold to strangers, stirred up his 
fellow silversmiths to create a riot in the market- 
place against this Paul who was ruining his busi- 
ness. And so in Jerusalem the passion of self- 
interest set the priests and elders and merchants 
into a league to suppress this Jesus, who was 
introducing a new impulse, a spiritual impulse, 
into their national and religious life. That was 
why they would not listen to Him at all. Their 
religion was hidebound and offered no room for 
natural and legitimate progress. Clinging to the 
dead past, besotted with pride and prejudice it 
stood in line of battle against the truth. The voice 
of heaven appealed to them, but they thrust their 
fingers into their ears. The purest sayings ever 
uttered they branded as lies from the bottomless 
pit. All the tender sympathy of the Master they 
scorned and made mock of. The more He loved 
them the worse they hated Him, and the more they 



210 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

conspired together to effect His murder. That is 
the case against Judaism, that the Lord offered 
them life and that they rejected Him. When it 
was evident that Judaism had no room for new 
truth, or for old truth stated in a new way, it was 
already dead. No use, the Lord would say, to 
bother longer with that. No profit to pour the 
new wine of the kingdom into that old, battered 
and shrunken wine-skin. Away with the old and 
worthless, so as to make room for a live Gospel 
instinct with power that would be able to reach 
men. 

Now the glory of Jesus Christ, and of the Chris- 
tian faith is this, that where Judaism was narrow 
and a failure, Christianity has been broad, and 
vital and a success from the beginning. From its 
first declaration the new faith gave assurance that 
its message was for all humanity. Peter preaches 
in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. His audi- 
ence, as appears in the second chapter of Luke's 
history of the Acts, was composed of Medes and 
Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, in 
Judea and Cappadocia, in Pontus, in Asia and all 
the rest of it. In that enumeration you see that in 
that single gathering were representatives from 
every country and race that fronted the Mediter- 
ranean Sea. And all those nations and peoples 
were represented in the three thousand who were 
added to the church on that historic day. Of 
course they were all of them Jews or descendants 
of Jews ; but they went their several ways to their 
homes, and in all those nations they began preach- 
ing the Gospel and making converts, with no dis- 
crimination or restriction for Jew or Gentile ; for 



FAITH EVER DEVELOPING 211 

bond or free. It was a new link, this Gospel, which 
held together all humanity, all who were children 
of God, the common Father. Later Peter went to 
Caesarea where he preached in the household of 
Cornelius. There he boldly says, "Of a truth I 
perceive that God is no respecter of persons, but 
in every nation he that feareth Him and worketh 
righteousness is accepted with Him" Paul 
preached on Mars Hill in Athens, that center of 
philosophy and cultivation, and there he pro- 
claimed that "God hath made of one blood all 
nations of men;" and "that they should seek the 
Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, though 
He be not far from every one of us." 

And so apostle after apostle went forth, travel- 
ing into strange lands and everywhere welcoming 
into the fellowship of Jesus whoever was willing 
to accept Him. Black men, or white ; king, soldier, 
or slave ; rich man or poor, all were one in Christ 
Jesus. No such unifying force was ever let loose 
into the world as this Gospel, which melts all 
hearts, conquers all iniquities, and recreates men 
in the likeness of their Lord. It won the ancient 
world in the brief space of three centuries, and 
now in this modern age it is girding itself afresh 
for advance into the strongholds of superstition, 
and to push its campaign until this whole round 
world shall know and serve the Redeemer. 

It is the privilege of students in our institutions 
of learning to realize that the Christian faith is 
qualified to make this appeal to all humanity, 
because it is particularly and profoundly a spiritual 
faith. It has no restrictions that tie it down to 
any city, to any race, to any clique, to any institu- 



212 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

tion, which in the least degree can interfere with 
its free approach to any soul. Is it said that Jesus 
was a Jew and that the Gospel in consequence 
must be Jewish in its tone and sympathy? But 
it has been noticed that Jesus broke away from 
Judaism and declared its inefficiency for the best 
religious uses. And as for Jesus Himself, though 
He was the son of David, He was also the All- 
embracing Man; or, as Paul expressed it, the 
Second Adam, the spiritual progenitor of all 
regenerate mankind, the Lord from Heaven. 

No, in the real Gospel there is the most perfect 
freedom. Its realm is that of spiritual enlighten- 
ment. The profound truths it presents, the 
Fatherhood of God, the Lordship of Jesus, the 
present help of God in the heart of every believer, 
are all independent of times and places and sea- 
sons and circumstances, and accordingly are 
forceful wherever they are properly proclaimed, 
and are adapted to every clime and to every age. 

But Christianity has another triumph in that, 
while it meets every man, it can also meet him 
in his uttermost need. There is no situation or 
condition which can be imagined for a troubled 
soul for which the Gospel fails to provide an 
instant and adequate relief. Is it instruction? 
But in the New Testament are opened up exhaust- 
less treasures of wisdom, which after all these 
nineteen centuries are unfolding in rich profusion 
the glorious purposes of the living God. Is it guid- 
ance? But the Christian man has the pledge of 
the Holy Spirit, the divine Comforter, who is to 
guide him into all truth. Is it guilt? Is it the 
problem of washing from heart and hand the stain 



FAITH EVER DEVELOPING 213 

of evil-doing? But the Gospel provides for that 
completely in the atoning love of the blessed Sav- 
ior. Is it light in the dark valley? But we have 
that also. A saintly man, the late Bishop Cum- 
mins, lay dying. Friends surround his couch. At 
his request the hymn, "Jesus, Lover of My Soul," 
had been sung and he had whispered, "Lord Jesus, 
receive my spirit." Then upon the room silence 
fell. For a time he lay with eyes closed, as if he 
had already departed. But suddenly the eyes 
opened, and a radiance not of earth illumined his 
countenance, and with joyous exclamation he 
cried, "Jesus, precious Savior," His wife who 
relates the incident, and the others who were pres- 
ent, declare that the cry was one of recognition. 
The passing saint, in the article of death, had 
beheld his Lord and was comforted. 

And so there is not a sentiment of man, which is 
pure and holy, but that the Gospel blesses it. All 
the way it is love ; Christlike love. And that is its 
glory. 

But we are not to neglect another aspect of the 
faith, that of its utter self-sacrifice. Whatever 
the occasion, it asks nothing on its own behalf, 
while at the same time it is giving its all. This 
attribute originates with Jesus Himself, who 
made Himself of no reputation and so offered the 
supreme sacrifice. And when we are saying this 
we speak not merely of the end, the crucifixion; 
but also of the beginning, and of every event of 
His wonderful sojourn among men. Bethlehem 
and the manger: sacrifice. The lowly home in 
Nazareth: sacrifice. Fasting forty days in the 
wilderness: sacrifice. Weary days of teaching 



214 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

and preaching to people who would not under- 
stand, or did not : sacrifice. Healing the sick and 
raising the dead, when every such exertion robbed 
Him of vital power till at times He was on the 
verge of exhaustion : sacrifice. Weeping with the 
mourners: more self -giving. And then Pilate's 
Hall, and the pain of the Sorrowful Way, and that 
of Calvary : all utter abasement, humiliation, sac- 
rifice. Following that gracious example Christian 
apostles, martyrs, and all faithful men have been 
making sacrifice all down the ages. They have 
consecrated their all upon the altar of their 
precious faith. What toilsome journeys! What 
exposures! What perils on the seas, and in 
strange lands, and among false brethren ! They 
have been doing this all the years, and they will 
ever be doing it so long as there is sorrow any- 
where to be comforted, or a burdened soul to be 
lifted up. Think of the Pauls and of the Peters 
and the nameless heroes who carried the banner 
of the cross to Rome, to Spain, to Britain ; of the 
modern Careys, and Judsons, and Mackays, and 
Livingstones, and the great host who this very 
hour, in foreign lands of in the home land, in 
slums and in prisons, and in the isles of the sea, 
who are carrying the message, and who mind 
nothing of toil or privation, if only the faith have 
its bearing and the Master be glorified. 

And please to notice that in all this self -giving 
they have claimed no return for the faith itself. 
It was a wonderful saying, that of Paul, when he 
told the people that he was all things to all men, 
if by any means he might save some. By that he 
signified no surrender of principle: he was too 



FAITH EVER DEVELOPING 215 

faithful to surrender anything that belonged to 
his Lord. What he meant was that he arranged 
to adapt himself to the conditions and thought of 
the people, and that he made no selfish or arbi- 
trary demands upon them. 

Peter wanted the Christians at Antioch to 
submit to certain Jewish forms and customs, but 
Paul at once rebuked this formalism of Peter and 
withstood him to his face. 

Jesus declared the spirit of the Gospel when He 
healed the man on the Sabbath day. When the 
Jews complained of His action He met them on 
their own ground by telling them that the Sabbath 
was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. 
That principle holds for every line of Gospel 
observance. Everything in the Gospel is for man ; 
nothing for itself. The Gospel gives and it gives 
to the uttermost. 

The lessons that remain will be of the briefest. 

1. It is the privilege of the student to realize 
that the Gospel offers little room for criticism and 
condemnation. All that is a survival of an evil 
past. Criticism and condemnation were promi- 
nent in Judaism in the period of her decay. When 
the Lord of life came with His promises of divine 
love Judaism hurled itself against Him with 
hatred and every malevolent accusation. It is a 
weak cause which busies itself with abuse and the 
red hand of murder. 

2. The student finds in the Gospel a touchstone 
which enables him to set the right valuation on old 
faiths. Wherever such are spiritual and alive 
with energy, and are in accord with the teachings 
of Jesus, they are worthy. If they make Chris- 



216 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

tians more zealous for the conquest of sin, and if 
they knit together the hearts of Christians, they 
are worthy. But faiths that fail in these respects, 
which are the mere survivals of a distant past, are 
discrediting themselves in the fact. Love, and 
trust, and zeal for the Master ; these are marks of 
a Gospel that the Master will bless. 

3. The student in this new age is alert for the 
best there is for himself and for the world. He 
wants the ripest scholarship, the most inspiring 
books, and the most uplifting influences of every 
sort. When it comes to faith he wants that also 
to be the very best. And so when he turns to the 
Gospel he insists that the brand offered him be of 
the holiest and most vital sort. To him therefore 
the conception of the Gospel which is here present- 
ed should make particular appeal. The ripe, the 
spiritual religion of Jesus, free from cant, and 
sham, and all vain pretense is worthy of his heart- 
iest allegiance. This new wine of the Master he 
may put into the newest bottles of love and service. 

Some excellent people are glad when they can 
squeeze themselves into some exclusive circle of 
Christians which prides itself on its ability to shut 
other Christians outside. Not so I. They rejoice 
when they imagine that they have discovered a 
path to the kingdom over which they can set up a 
sign, "Private Way." Not so I. Some would pic- 
ture the Gospel as cold and harsh and forbidding, 
and full of restrictions and repellant prohibitions. 
All that was of Judaism, and of that I want noth- 
ing for me or mine. 

General Banks of Massachusetts once told of a 
man who was struggling in the icy waters of the 



FAITH EVER DEVELOPING 217 

Merrimac River. Some ran to his relief and 
pushed out a plank which he convulsively grasped, 
only to lose his hold and slip back into the river. 
When he came up he grasped it again, but slipped 
off the second time. When he came up next he 
called out, "For heaven's sake give me the wooden 
end of the plank.' * The end they had turned to 
him was covered with ice and no wonder that he 
could not hold fast. So some do with the faith. 
For the world's salvation they thrust out com- 
mandments, and ordinances, and burdens, and 
law, and dogma, and sinners grasp them only to 
slip back into the depths. But may we learn, all 
of us, to offer to the world the real Gospel of the 
Master, the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, 
the vital Gospel of power, which grips men fast and 
makes them fruitful in every good word and work, 
to the Lord's great glory. 



FAITH'S HEAVENLY TREASURE 



XII. 
FAITH'S HEAVENLY TREASURE 

St. Matthew 6: 20 — "But lay up for yourselves treas- 
ures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, 
and where thieves do not break through nor steal." 

A COMMON interpretation put upon this 
passage is to the effect that our Lord is 
expressing condemnation of thrift and 
enterprise, and is warning His hearers of the soul 
peril that results from the ownership of property. 
To those who take this view the argument runs 
much in this fashion. Beware of thieves. There 
are many rascals at large in the world. Their 
fingers are itching to hypothecate your bonds, to 
water your stocks, and to make ducks and drakes 
with any of your possessions that they can lay 
hands on. If you lodge your securities in a safe 
that is warranted fire-proof and burglar-proof, 
they will pick the lock or blow off the door. Or if 
you deposit your cash in the bank, what with 
carelessness in the directorate, cupidity at the 
desk and violence in the vaults, you are sure to 
lose every dollar. Consequently it is vanity to 
waste your time in saving money. 

Or again, there are moths, troublesome creat- 
ures that delight to ravage your most cherished 
belongings. They will gnaw at your richest car- 
pets, revel in your costliest furs, and make havoc 



Elon College, N. C, January 10, 1915. 



222 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

of your spare coats and gowns. Regardless of the 
rarity of the fabric, the perfection of the design, or 
of its value in the market, they will bite, devour, 
and destroy. Because there are moths, to expend 
cash on fine raiment is a waste, for which reason 
let all the milliners and tailors go out of business. 

Or again, age and decay are enlisted in a rank 
conspiracy for the destruction of all the products 
of the human hand. You build a home that you 
have been looking forward to for years, but before 
the rafters are spread overhead disintegration is 
at work below. Your columns of iron will rust 
and your pillars of wood will moulder. Your 
statues of marble and granite will crumble into 
dust. All your triumphal arches, all your elabor- 
ate bridges that bind your cities together, all your 
marble palaces will presently yield to the tooth of 
destroying time. And so the wise man will have 
nothing to do with them. Let them all go ! Put 
aside the notion of having any treasures on the 
earth ! 

Precisely that is the interpretation that some 
very good people will put on this passage of our 
Lord's preaching. 

But to be wholly frank with you, I must confess 
that I have no confidence that our Lord was giving 
any such instruction. 

We are to remember that there are tides and 
currents in human opinion, just as there are tides 
and currents in the ocean. Among these tides and 
currents are some that flow out of the monkish 
life of the Middle Ages. Some of those good 
monks contracted the idea that all the pleasure, all 



FAITH'S HEAVENLY TREASURE 223 

the joy, all the good of this world must of need be 
bad. Their thought was crystallized in those lines 
of Thomas Moore, 

This world is all a fleeting show, 
For man's illusion given, 

and they fondly imagined if irreligious people 
were ever to be attracted toward religion that it 
must be by making them discontented with every- 
thing that the world has to offer. To be good they 
must be taught to be poor, and to be happy in pov- 
erty as the best estate possible. But I doubt if the 
Lord desired sinners to be exercised after this 
method, and I doubt further whether such exercise 
is profitable for anybody. There are wonderful 
beauties in this world which God has made, and 
what is the use of cheating any one into thinking 
otherwise? There is glory in God's beautiful sun- 
shine. There is a divine purity breathing from 
the lily, and a divine blush that lingers on the 
cheek of the rose, and every one knows it. The 
earth with all its weaknesses and miseries can be 
the abode of precious joys, and every one knows 
that too. 

But aside from that, as I read the Gospels, I 
never discover that Jesus expresses disparage- 
ment with the handiwork of God in the formation 
and the management of the world. On the contrary 
He is ever manifesting delight in nature. He calls 
attention to the glory of the sunset sky. He lis- 
tens for the song of the bird and watches the 
sparrow in his swooping flight. He catches the 
splendor of the roses of Sharon, and rejoices in 
the profit that the husbandman gathers from his 



224 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

fields when they are white to the harvest. 
Nowhere in the Gospels is there any approval of 
poverty as a blessed estate, or any commendation 
of unthrif t or of needless waste. Far from letting 
things take care of themselves, after Jesus had fed 
the five thousand He bade His disciples "gather up 
the fragments that nothing be lost." Nowhere 
does He say that nothing is better than something, 
or that the poor is better than the rich. If Chris- 
tianity is under obligation to declare it wrong to 
gather and own property, what an opportunity the 
Lord let slip when He was talking with Nicode- 
mus, the millionaire of Jerusalem ! No. Monkish 
mediaevalism was all astray as to the nature of 
the faith, and as to what the Lord wished His dis- 
ciples to become. Christ was never a class man, 
to puff . up the poor man at the expense of his 
wealthier brother, or the rich man at the expense 
of the poor. He certainly gave more cautions to 
the rich than He did to the poor, because the rich 
needed the cautions, and because the poor could 
hardly help their poverty if they tried. But He 
well knew that both stations have their tempta- 
tions, and so He met men simply as men, all on 
the same level, and with no suggestion of setting 
class against class. To rich or to poor He gave the 
same sound counsel to set all treasures at their 
true value. The treasures are good, but there is 
choice in the manner of holding them, and also a 
difference in results growing out of the manner 
of holding them. They can be used on the earth, 
but the earth is not the best place for their safe- 
keeping. The earth is not on the one hand a vale 
of tears, but on the other hand it must not be 



FAITH'S HEAVENLY TREASURE 225 

mistaken as a permanent treasure place, or as a 
permanent home place. This is so because as a 
treasure place it is insecure, while as a home place 
it is soon to perish altogether. And just this is 
the content of the lesson, that while man may 
hold some treasure here, and have honest enjoy- 
ment in possessing it, after all whatever he wishes 
to keep and enjoy forever he must store in a safer 
place of deposit, a place where no shock of time 
and no changes of nature can intervene to hinder 
holding them in everlasting possession. 

Treasures. Lay up for yourselves treasures. 
The Savior here commends honorable industry 
and care-taking so far as to draw an analogy 
between success in business and success in religion. 
In object these aims are different, but in method 
He would suggest that they are much the same. 
In both there must be attention to conditions, and 
no little wise planning and wisely directed effort. 
I am wondering why it is that so many, who com- 
prehend thoroughly the necessity for concen- 
trative energy, when business matters are at the 
fore, are failing altogether to realize the impor- 
tance of the same quality in the affairs of religion. 
There is no question about the bank : it must have 
sharp oversight. The books must be all balanced 
to a penny before the clerks can leave, even if they 
have to stay half the night. All notes due must be 
collected at once. Paper presented for discount 
must be strictly first-class, and be endorsed by 
responsible men. Investments must be gilt-edged, 
they must be interest-bearing, and if there is any 
appearance of possible depreciation they must be 
disposed of before the bank suffers loss. No stone 



226 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

is to lie unturned when turning it would be for the 
advantage of the bank. 

And your growing merchant puts his heart into 
his business. He has one eye on the market, so as 
to purchase the most attractive goods, and at the 
lowest figure ; and his other eye he has on his stock 
so as to clear the counters of unsalable patterns. 
And he must watch his customers to see that they 
have a good commercial rating, and then he must 
be prompt in collecting his accounts. No one can 
trust his business, no matter how long it has been 
established, to run itself, for while it is running 
itself it is running into the ground. And yet while 
all this is so well understood in secular affairs, 
when it comes to the things that pertain to the 
kingdom of God it is quite common for people to 
imagine these must thrive, whether taken care of 
or not, simply because they are affairs of religion. 

A Sunday School some suppose must prosper 
simply because it is a Sunday School, and a church 
because it is a church. But that is pure delusion. 
Test the matter with a vine, say an ivy vine. You 
plant it beside the church, and possibly you may 
consecrate it with some ceremony so as to make 
it a sort of a holy vine. And because it is a holy 
vine, you let it take care of itself. Once in a while 
you think of it, but on the whole you give it neg- 
lect. You mean to water it, but do not, and the 
sun bakes the earth about its roots and scorches 
the tender leaf. You mean to train it up the wall, 
but you do not, and it reaches out its tendrils but 
gets no support, and so when you come it is all 
twisted in a disorderly mass on the ground. You 
intend to protect it from injury, but you do not. 



FAITH'S HEAVENLY TREASURE 227 

and so the swine come and trample it, and root 
about it and tear it up. And when you waken to 
the havoc that has been wrought shall you com- 
plain of Providence that it neglected its vine? 
But God was ready to protect it, and He would 
have protected it, had you but done the part 
allotted to you. 

And so there is a tender vine, the Sunday 
School. And Sunday Schools prosper, not merely 
because they are Sunday Schools, but because of 
faithful officers and teachers, and because of faith- 
ful scholars, who feel the interest of personal obli- 
gation: who are faithful in attendance for them- 
selves, and who are faithful in securing the attend- 
ance of others. 

And there is that other tender vine, the church. 
Churches prosper not merely because they are 
churches, but because the conditions of success are 
met in their administration; because of earnest 
and pious officers, because of a zealous and alert 
membership, who love the Lord's work and are not 
afraid to have all the world see that they love it 
with their whole hearts. To build up a church 
there is to be a live and a consecrated membership. 
Consecration and energy in the membership will 
multiply a good pastor's power. Consecration and 
energy in the membership will push forward the 
work with an inefficient pastor, or even with no 
pastor at all. 

Now when we see so clearly that live methods 
and business conditions are essential in trade, and 
are equally necessary in the general management 
of religious affairs, we should readily apprehend 
the bearing of the same principles on the religious 



228 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

life of the individual. For a man to have treasure 
in heaven there must be a laying up of treasure, 
a giving of thought and attention and application, 
and regard must be paid to the conditions that 
will bring about the result desired. Peter had 
this in mind when he said, "Brethren, give dili- 
gence to make your calling and election sure." As 
we glance at salvation from the earth side we note 
that it is intensely personal work. The gospels 
and the epistles liken it to a race, to putting on the 
armor, to fighting in a battle, and to the glorying 
in the fruits of victory. God sets wide open the 
gate of His everlasting mercy, but He asks of each 
disciple that he enter the gate. The Master leads 
to the fountain of the water of life, but each must 
lean and drink for himself. The gift of God in 
salvation is free, without money and without 
price. Any man who is willing to fashion his 
course after Jesus in submission to the will of God 
may come. And here appears the use of the world 
as a portal to the coming life of the hereafter. 
While here we are on probation, as one may say, 
and God is making trial of us to discover who will 
accept the conditions of the new life, and prove his 
fitness for it. I knew once a bright young fellow 
who applied for employment in the establishment 
of one of our great merchants. To be connected 
with that house was assurance of a career that 
should satisfy any moderate ambition. But my 
young friend did not enter that business at the top. 
For two weeks he was put at all sorts of tasks, 
some of them menial and disagreeable enough. 
He could not see why he should be set to washing 
windows and scrubbing the floor, when there were 



FAITH'S HEAVENLY TREASURE 229 

other people about the place who were hired for 
such jobs; but as he was determined to stay with 
the house he took it all good humoredly and did 
every task as well as he could. But all the time he 
was under the eye of the head of the house, who 
was testing him to see whether he was to prove a 
good man or a time-server. And so God is proving 
us by our faithfulness in moral and religious duty. 
To be faithful here and construct a noble religious 
character here, is to assure having a religious char- 
acter when we come to the place where all 
character must be religious. But to possess this 
religious character implies self-restraint and self- 
conquest. Solomon had the right of it when he 
wrote in the proverb, "Greater is he that ruleth 
his own spirit than he that taketh a city." O this 
self -conquest ! It means being gentle and loving 
and kind when passion is still, and it means most 
of all being gentle and loving and kind when pas- 
sion if it had its way would rage like a wild beast. 
It means obedience to the call of duty when obedi- 
ence is a pleasant thing ; walking in shady groves 
and among springing flowers; but most of all it 
means obedience to duty when the path is beset 
with dangers, when the weary hand wants rest 
and the troubled heart is shrinking with forecast 
of possible defeat. To be firm and true then is to 
be sublime. To obey then is to be like the Son of 
God, who in the shadows and agony of Geth- 
semane exclaims, "Thy will be done." Conquest 
like that is assurance of heaven, of having treas- 
ure in heaven. 

Treasure in heaven. Here our Lord is remind- 
ing us of what we all know full well, and yet what 



230 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

we often need to be reminded of, that these riches 
of earth which we set so much store by, and which 
have such possibilities of power and comfort, may 
be riches here and yet may not be riches in heaven. 
It is a fundamental principle of political economy 
that values depend upon uses and demand. There 
is value in a house if some one wishes it for a 
home ; but when no one wishes it, when it stands 
year after year tenantless and eating itself up in 
insurance and taxes, it may be worse to own it 
than not to own it. There is value in a piece of 
paper when some government stamps it with its 
promise to pay. And yet there is a difference. 
Some time ago there came over the sea one of 
those stalwart peasants of Northern Europe, the 
kind of immigrant that the country welcomes. 
When he landed at Castle Garden, which was then 
where immigrants were received, he found that 
the foreign money that he brought with him had 
to be changed into funds current in America. 
And while walking about in Battery Park a kind 
stranger offered to change his money for him at a 
slight brokerage. So they made the exchange, the 
immigrant paying over the money of his govern- 
ment, and the accommodating friend paying in 
return a pile of nice, crisp, new bills which had all 
the appearance of being good money. But when 
the new-comer tried to buy something with his fine 
new money he found that no one would take it. It 
was Confederate money, the promise to pay of a 
treasury that no longer existed. 

And much that man sets heart on here, much 
that he might sell his soul to buy, has no currency 
in heaven. I have heard of a steamer that was 



FAITH'S HEAVENLY TREASURE 231 

foundering in the Pacific Ocean. She had struck 
a hidden reef and was slowly settling down, and 
the captain had ordered the crew and the passen- 
gers into the boats. But one man would not go 
with the others, and after the boats were well 
away he ran from cabin to cabin, gathering up the 
treasures which the passengers had abandoned. 
He found bars of silver and gold; watches and 
chains of gold, and brooches and ear jewels, and 
all this he put into a pile on the deck and then sat 
down beside them while the ship went on settling 
down and down. For once in his life he was rich, 
rich for a half hour, and he chose to perish in the 
midst of his sudden wealth. Was a man who 
would do that quite out of his mind, unbalanced by 
his greed of wealth ? But then are not the others 
unbalanced also, who gather and gather on the 
deck of this fast sinking ship, this present life, 
unmindful of the other life, so much richer and 
broader, to which the life of the present is as a 
passing day? And when all these fine plans for 
accumulation succeed, when wealth pours in upon 
its possessor like a flood, what avails it after all ? 
What are strings of pearls, ropes on ropes of 
pearls, in the sight of heaven, whose gate is a 
single pearl ? What is the sparkle of the diamond 
in that city whose foundations blaze with all man- 
ner of precious stones ? You remember that John 
in the Revelation tells that the "street of the city 
was pure gold." How is that to be interpreted, 
the golden street, the gems for foundations, and 
the gates of pearl ? It is not to be imagined for a 
moment that John was speaking of these as real- 
ities. He was presenting a figure through which 



232 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

he meant to teach that God dwells in the splendor 
of a magnificence which we cannot comprehend, 
and moreover that up there all that men count as 
symbols of riches are of such slight concern that 
one might be making gates of them, or walls of 
a city, or a pavement to be trampled under foot. 
And when this is conceded how is it to stand with 
any soul that devotes itself wholly to the present 
life, who amasses great treasures of the kind that 
is valuable here, but who has put away no treas- 
ure in heaven? For this world he may possess 
mansions, and lands, and railways, and every lux- 
ury that vast wealth can buy. But at last old age 
comes creeping upon him like a thief in the night, 
yet with this difference that it never stops its 
creeping by day or by night, till at length the hour 
strikes that is to mark his departure out of the 
world. He leaves his beautiful mansion to dwell 
in the narrow house. Out of all his acres all he 
has now is the meager six foot by two. And the 
world treasures all are left behind. Somebody else 
whips his fast trotters up the avenue. Some one 
else carries the combination of his big safe, and 
clips his coupons. Some one else collects the divi- 
dends on his investments. Of all that he had he 
now has nothing, for across that narrow sea he 
may carry nothing, not even the two coins that 
hold down his eyes. How now is riches better 
than poverty? The rich and the poor lie down 
together, and the Lord is the maker of them all. 
Then it is evident that he only is rich who has 
taken the pains to lay up treasure in heaven. 

Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. No 
hard task that when one sets himself to it dili- 



FAITH'S HEAVENLY TREASURE 233 

gently. It has been argued that any one can have 
anything in the world, provided he devotes him- 
self to that one thing with all his powers. That 
may be relatively true with earthly concerns, but 
it is positively true that whoever devotes himself 
to laying up heavenly treasure with the help of the 
Savior is certain to succeed. 

Such treasure is laid up by active faith in the 
Lord Jesus Christ. Call the Christian life a jour- 
ney; then faith is the first station, the point of 
departure. All Christian teaching and all Chris- 
tian living is based upon faith. "Believe on the 
Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved; 9 ' that 
is the affimative pledge, of which the converse is 
this, "Without faith it is impossible to please 
God." What faith accomplishes we learn from the 
apostle John who declares, "This is the victory 
that overcometh the world, even your faith.' 9 
Heaven itself is the reward of the faithful, for the 
Lord has given the promise, "Be thou faithful 
unto death and I will give thee the crown of life.' 9 
But faith has this power because it enables the 
disciple to see how the other life touches this, how 
life reaches into life, how earth life flows right on 
into the heavenly life. Our Lord one day touched 
the eyes of a blind man and the heavenly work 
commenced, but at the start the man saw dimly, 
for he saw men as trees walking. And the world 
sight is blind, but faith gives the open vision and 
we see how all things of to-day are affecting 
eternity. A base act to-day leads to other base 
acts, and the series goes on, and there is no stop- 
ping it till God stretches forth His hand. And it 
is the same with acts that are high and noble. 



234 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

They live. Men die, but their good deeds live after 
them. In all our great cities we have the central 
station for generating the electricity which illum- 
inates the streets and buildings. Some one moves 
a switch and the dynamos revolve and a thrill 
courses over the wires and almost instantly there 
is a blaze of light wherever the wires communi- 
cate. The unskilful might see only the turning of 
the switch, and nothing of the effects beyond. 
And so some who are unskilled in conduct note 
only our isolated acts, but the wise understand 
how every act here sets impulses moving in the 
other life and so in heaven itself. 

We lay up treasure of love in heaven. Every 
Christian who lives in the spirit of Jesus is grow- 
ing rich in the friendships of heaven. Could we 
but know it there is nothing which we do which 
can escape the searching eyes of God's angels. 
They see all who are truly Christ's servants, and 
they learn to love them? They smile upon all 
righteousness and meekness and gentleness: and 
so when some pure soul that the angels have 
learned to admire and love ascends from earth to 
glory, I am sure that it will not have to tarry 
there long for an introduction. The angels will 
come trooping about a soul like that and will say, 
"Here is our friend, we are glad to greet you." 

And acts of faith can be laid up in heaven by 
transfer. When you travel abroad you do not 
attempt to carry all your cash on your person, for 
you might lose or suffer from robbery. So you 
buy a letter of credit, and when you are in need of 
funds in London or Constantinople you go to some 



FAITH'S HEAVENLY TREASURE 235 

banker, where your credit has preceded you, and 
you draw at your pleasure. And so one can trans- 
fer the riches of earth to the other side. He that 
hath and gives to the Lord is laying up treasure in 
Heaven. A sanctuary is to be erected to the 
Lord's glory. The people who assemble on the 
Lord's day have been prospered and they enjoy 
their comfortable homes. They desire to honor 
the Lord with their substance, and so they meet 
together and determine to beautify the place of 
His sanctuary. And they bring their choice offer- 
ings, the rich out of their wealth, and the poor out 
of their narrow resources, but all with glad spirit, 
happy to make sacrifice for the Lord. And when 
their Sabbath home is erected, and they join in 
song and praise, extolling the name of the Lord, 
who can doubt that they have been laying up treas- 
ure in heaven? 

It is the same with the outflow of generous piety 
in loving assistance to the poor and needy. In this 
hard struggle for living, while some prosper others 
stumble by the way. They may be worthy and 
industrious, but circumstances are against them. 
A harvest may have failed, or there have been 
widespread business reverses, or there have come 
sickness and death to the breadwinner, and the 
stricken ones do not know where to turn. In such 
case the Christian finds opportunity. Evidently 
it is his privilege to give from his abundance for 
the help of the distressed. Blessed, thrice blessed 
the hand of charity which gives, and gives so 
unobtrusively that the left hand knows nothing of 
the right hand's action. Cash handled in that way 
goes through the clearing-house of heaven, for the 



236 FAITH FOR THE COLLEGE MAN 

Scripture says, "He that giveth to the poor lendeth 
to the Lord." And so the kind heart lays up treas- 
ure in heaven. 

Such treasure is laid up in our support of the 
mission work in the foreign field. Possibly those 
who give most in this service are the missionaries 
themselves, for they bid farewell to home and 
kindred, and they go out, their lives in their hand, 
to dwell among strange races, apart from their 
most cherished associations, exposed to strange 
diseases, and even when they are in the best of 
health compelled to the doom of a lonesomeness 
that we who have friends near us can hardly 
conceive of. 

We who cannot go with them can help them 
with material assistance. We can cheer them by 
the expression of sympathy, backed by the finan- 
cial contributions that make sympathy effective. 
I am thinking now of what a single fifty-dollar 
bill, or its equivalent, can accomplish when it is 
translated in this manner into the life of the mis- 
sion service. Fifty dollars, a new organ for the 
service of song. Fifty dollars, a new set of song 
books for the mission chapel. Fifty dollars, that 
is the support of a native Bible woman for an 
entire year. Fifty dollars, that means a hundred 
things that will comfort and bless the mission 
worker on the far side of the earth, a hundred 
things that will tell for the ingathering of souls 
for years to come. And so in all these gifts of 
material treasure, the millions that go for the 
endowment of colleges and hospitals, the millions 
that go for the home work of the Gospel, the mil- 
lions that are busy in uplifting the condition of the 



FAITH'S HEAVENLY TREASURE 237 

poor, and the individual gifts, small or great, when 
given with overflowing love for the Savior, are 
treasures laid up in heaven. 

And then there is heart treasure in heaven. We 
have lost loved ones who have gone on before. We 
think of them, for while they are unseen, memory- 
recalls their dear faces, or their tone of voice, or 
their familiar gesture, or their loving word. And 
because they lived truly we wish to live truly so 
that we may be with them altogether by and by. 
And so with much thought of them, and of God, 
and of the dear Savior, our conversation is in 
heaven. Our earth life, while we may enjoy its 
comforts, is the lesser thing and is tribu- 
tary to that which is to come. And in 
this manner our thoughts and activities may be 
so tempered with heaven that we may dwell here 
in the heavenly atmosphere. Living like that is 
living for heaven, and our treasure is in heaven. 
I am thinking this moment of the riches laid up 
in that storehouse of the Great King. All the 
saints have their treasure there. Each of you may 
have treasure there. Wise you are if you daily lay 
up more treasure, and by system. For then you 
have clear title to the mansions in the skies. It is 
not for long till we come into possession. Day by 
day our friends are passing, and we go also : 

Dim shadows gather thickly round, 
And up the misty stairs they climb, 
The cloudy stair that upward leads, 
To where the golden portals shine: 
Round which the kneeling spirits wait 
The opening of the golden gate. 



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